The Short Corner: Ray Parks Jr. brings elite versatility to Gilas

In today’s basketball, versatility is the name of the game.

The most valuable players are the ones who can do multiple things at a high level. There’s a reason why the traditional pass-first point guard that doesn’t score, the post-up big, and spot-up shooters who can’t shoot off movement or defend are dwindling in numbers.

Being one-dimensional doesn’t cut it anymore. Do-it-all playmakers that score and pass at a high level, 3-and-D players that bring both at a high level, and bigs that can score inside and out dominate the hoops landscape precisely because they bring more tools to the table and can impact the game in a variety of ways.

Similarly, Ray Parks Jr. is a guy who brings so much to the table, that he can be utilized in a myriad of ways to be a highly impactful player. Let’s take a quick look at where he excels relative to the standard in the B.League:

PPP = Points per Possession; all stats provided by InStat Sports

Other than slightly below-average marks at the rim and in pick-and-roll plays, Parks is above average to elite from every other spot on the floor and does a great job scoring on and off the ball. Basically, he’s a three-level scorer capable of scoring anywhere on the floor by either creating for himself or moving without the ball. This level of versatility in scoring allows him to contribute in a lot of ways. Even if you’re able to shut down one avenue of scoring, he has multiple other options at his disposal. We’ll detail all the things he does well and why I think he’s a great fit to play next to other great players under the banner of Gilas Pilipinas.

Here, we talked about how this current iteration of Gilas likes to go out on the floor and score early. Parks adds another option for them when they run. He’s capable of bringing the ball up himself, filling the lanes, or running to the corner for open threes. With Dwight Ramos out for the tournament, Gilas needs another early offense weapon to fill up the void.

Parks might have been a bit below average at the rim in Japan, but it’s important to remember that any shot at the rim is typically more efficient than a shot away from it. His relative inefficiency up close is more than made up for by his ability to get to the rim in the first place. Around 40-percent of his shot attempts were at the rim. This is still very efficient basketball.

He might not be an explosive leaper, but he has a quick first step, a strong body, and craftiness honed by experience to help him get the job done. He mostly gets separation by being able to use his body well. He’s also not the shiftiest ball-handler, yet he compensates for it by using his sturdy frame to create space and his off arm to nudge his defenders away from him. He’s strong for a perimeter player which allows him to shed or absorb contact en route to foul calls.

There’s a common misconception that analytics says that the midrange shots are ill-advised shots to take. This isn’t exactly true.

Long twos (like jumpers with a foot on a line) are bad because moving a bit back would net you a whole extra point. Other midrangers are only bad if you’re bad at it. Good players, like Parks, make great use of their ability to drain floaters and hit from midrange efficiently. That’s the primary reason why he should not stop taking these shots. He has a really good touch and arc on his floaters that let him score in the paint and offset his lack of elite vertical pop. Draining stepbacks from 16 feet out while sprinkling in pull-up jumpers has been Parks’ bread and butter that makes him effective from this range consistently

Where Parks shines most in comparison to other Filipinos is beyond the arc. You can count on one hand the number of international-level shooters in the country. Among them, Parks is near the top of the list.

The neat thing about him is that he doesn’t just stand in a corner and wait for the ball to come to him. He can dribble into a triple or create space with a stepback. The majority of his makes from deep were assisted, but it was partly due to his role being a secondary ball-handler next to one of the best point guards in Japan, Takumi Saito.

His on-ball scoring is good, but his potential to be great internationally lies more in his ability to play without the ball. An elite off-ball player at the Asian level, if utilized properly, one of his best skills off-ball is his movement shooting, the ability to make shots on the move (e.g. running off screens, shooting off handoffs, sprinting into the catch before shooting).

Parks is good at re-orienting his body after catching the ball, aligning himself toward the rim, and firing long balls in a quick and organized manner. This lets him be more versatile than the average shooter, which opens up a ton of options playbook-wise. Zipper screens, down screens, staggered screens, hammer screens, elevator screens, and all these options are available if Parks is the guy who’s going to get the ball in his hands.

In a team with talented drivers and passers like Thirdy and Kiefer Ravena, defensive breakdowns leading into kickout passes are bound to happen. Parks tends to feast on the resulting closeout and would do well to be situated in the same lineups as these guys.

The threat of his jumper causes defenders to commit to the closeout. Parks can use their momentum against them and attack the rim off the catch. This is the value of secondary ball handlers. They may not initiate the offense nor do they create the advantages, but they’re the ones who capitalize on them and make it painful to commit mistakes.

With good passers like Will Navarro, Geo Chiu, and Kevin Quiambao, Parks can cause a lot of problems by cutting, as there are guys who can find him at optimal spots on the court. He has great timing on cuts and he had good chemistry with his big men in Nagoya, when they ran delay actions.

He has a great feel for knowing when his man is asleep and the paint is empty. This is especially true when teams run zone defenses. Parks is great at running through the gaps in the defense for easy buckets. Given that this Gilas squad isn’t exactly a shooters’ paradise, teams might be inclined to run zone against them, but Parks knows how to punish them.

In the game against New Zealand, the Tall Blacks fully checked Gilas’ pick and roll game, and they were forced to scrap their actions out of ball screens from the latter part of the second quarter onwards. Instead, they had their main ball handlers getting the ball with downhill momentum through dribble handoffs and similar actions. This is where Parks excels. He’s a terrific player coming off these plays that allow him to get a head of steam.

Nagoya loved to get him going by running him off staggered screens to get him separation from his defender and an open lane to attack. They also loved to get him the ball off Zoom action (down screen into a handoff). What you’ll see here isn’t all too different from what Gilas did which makes me think that he can be seamlessly integrated into the team.

I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating. A player that can score and pass is the hardest player to defend. The thing with Parks is that he can pass well too.

In all of the scoring actions we saw earlier, he incorporates passing into it very well. When he drives, scoring isn’t the only option for him. He’s able to make drop passes to his bigs or kickout passes in either direction to shooters. Live dribble passing allows him to punish the help defenders, who perceive his scoring to be a threat.

Parks has been terrific at making connecting passes or extra passes. These are passes where there is a defensive breakdown and the player brings the ball to where the opening is. Play connectors like Joe Ingles, Lonzo Ball, and Draymond Green take advantage of scrambling defenses by relaying the ball to places that would hurt the defense. Being able to move the ball and see these openings make any team better.

A particular aspect of Parks’ passing that he shines the most is in playmaking from dribble handoff actions.

His ability to get downhill off of these sets is dangerous, combined with his live dribble passing ability. Once he gets downhill, he’s able to draw the defense towards him and find the openings that result from it.

We’ve seen every wing player in Gilas make passing reads from handoffs. Francis Lopez, Carl Tamayo, Dwight Ramos, Will Navarro, and Rhenz Abando have all made similar passing reads with this Gilas squad. Parks can do it just as well, if not better.

I’ve seen multiple posts saying that Parks could play the point guard position. It’s true that he’s a good passer and can playmake from pick-and-rolls and handoffs. He has the height to see over the defense better than smaller guards and he can send the ball to the roller.

Parks might be the most complete player on the lineup, but he’s not without limits. He’s not a point guard and I don’t think he should be playing point guard for long stretches of time.

First, he’s not the most accurate passer in the world. This is especially true with high passes and lob passes. He tends to be inaccurate with these. He can overshoot it, put too much heat on it, or mistime it. Of his 58 turnovers, 23 were from inaccurate passes. Meaning, Parks threw an intercepted pass around every other game.

It’s not bad to be fair, but it’s not great either.

Parks is a good ball-handler, but his handles aren’t quite up-to-par with what you want from a point guard at the international level.

On occasion, the handle can be wide and loose which makes it prone to being stolen. The biggest shortcoming we can sift through is his inability to control his pace and shift between multiple gears. More often than not, Parks plays fast. He doesn’t probe and wait for the defender to veer away and instead tries to barge, whether or not a driving lane exists. This leads to him getting into tight situations where he’s in close contact with his defender which makes it tough for him to smoothly navigate through it, duly because of his loose handle. He also doesn’t wait around or keep his dribble alive and tends to pick the ball up, only to find himself with no options around him.

This problem is made worse by what seems to be a poor grip strength of the ball by Parks.

There was an alarming amount of times that he had the ball poked from him after he put two hands on it. When he gets played tightly because he dribbled into a bad situation, it wasn’t uncommon to see the ball get swiped from him and go the other way. This ball safety issue deters his ability to be a point guard for long stretches of time.

Not being an international-level point guard is by no means a knock on Parks. It just shows that he’s not 100 percent complete.

It does not detract from the fact that he does everything else well on offense. In my opinion, he’s the most complete player on the team. This versatility should result in a highly productive Asia Cup campaign for him.

He’s a three-level scorer who can score with or without the ball and distribute it well to his teammates. He can create shots for himself and take advantage of high leverage situations created by his teammates.

It won’t be surprising to me at the least if he ends up showing why he’s one of the best talents in Philippine basketball.

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Catch Gilas’ games in the 2022 FIBA Asia Cup live on GigaPlay. Download it now on Android or IOS.

Highlights of the games will also be on SMART Sports.