Chandler Parsons, a 28-year old Memphis Grizzlies forward expected to work through his prime year in 2016-17, has not been an adequate basketball player this season. At this point in the tale of woe his disappointments aren’t reflected in terms relative to the four-year $94.8 million contract he signed over the offseason, or the two-year run of 15 points and five rebounds (alongside above-mark three-point shooting) he averaged with the Dallas Mavericks prior to coming to Memphis.

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No, this frustration stems completely from the realization that Parsons, who has struggled for years with knee woes, is a millstone of an NBA basketball player at this stage in his career. He might one day bounce back, but for now his Grizzlies totals include averages of six points and 2.5 rebounds in 20 minutes a contest, shooting a horrendous 33 percent.

Among NBA players working 18 minutes or more this season, only Memphis teammate Andrew Harrison (at 32 percent) shoots worse this season. The list surrounding Parsons is mostly made up of either too-young or too-old guards, and nobody on a significant free agent deal save for Parsons’ closest comp in Luol Deng, a first-year Laker recently pulled from the rotation.

Deng is a nearly-nightly subject of ridicule from Lakers Twitter, who waited a whole week or two into the season before declaring Deng (who plays sound defense and shoots nearly 39 percent) the bust of the century. Parsons, a social media fixture in scenarios either petal-laden or times typically too-dicey to document in 140 characters or less, has stayed himself throughout.

For better or worse. From a talk with Geoff Calkins at the Memphis Commercial-Appeal prior to the weekend, Parsons vowed to never back away from his various favorite websites:

On Saturday night, though, after Parsons failed to put “the ball in the basket” four times in five attempts, Chandler came clean a bit:

That 1-5 showing from the floor on Saturday came during what could have been an (almost too-obvious) mid-season rebirth for Parsons.

Friday and Saturday marked the first time he and his balky right knee had played in back-to-back contests in 2016-17. Notably, the games were against Dallas and Houston, two teams that had employed and celebrated Parsons (just as Memphis has) before declining to retain his services for the sort of financial reasons that pushed him toward the Grizzlies – a team that has been desperate to add a shooter and playmaker from the swingman position for years.

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Parsons was clearly amped for the experience and challenge prior to the weekend:

The resulting totals weren’t encouraging. Parsons shot 4-16 from the floor in over 43 total minutes for the Grizz, scoring nine points as his team lost twice.

Chandler Parsons will be paid nearly $73 million more after this season until the year 2020. Grizzlies fans on Monday, a day and a half after his 1-5 showing against the Rockets, were still sub-tweeting the guy:

Those were just the sub-tweets. Have fun with the stuff sent right at him:

(Remember, this was the guy that was involved in a NBA player-vs.-player Twitter beef that came off as so one-sided that the league, reportedly, had to introduce rules telling players and teams to take it easy on the Glass Joes of NBA Twitter.)

Not as a result, but as an expected reaction, Parsons has (according to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon, who covered him in Dallas) decided to shut down his social media accounts for the rest of the year. Apparently a 1-4 shooting showing at a home game, with four fouls in 22 minutes, was the tipping point:

Not that all, on Monday morning at least, were impressed:

The turn, as-yet unannounced for reasons you would probably guess, came after Parsons went into both the back-to-back setting and the Lost Weekend with such great hopes. From his interview with Geoff Calkins:

The work, despite the fine efforts of Twitter’s best, is not the problem.

Chandler Parsons is pushing hard to return to form. The fact that he’s putting famous and attractive friends (newest turnout: someone named “Bella Thorne”) in front row seats at Grizzlies games (Parsons on the reaction: “It’s kind of an invasion of privacy in a way.” Geoff Calkins: “But she was sitting right there, in the front row”) doesn’t take away from the fact that Chandler Parsons, for years, has attempted to do this the right way.

His knee just sucks.

That’s the sort of comment that can fit into an easily-digestible tweet, and despite its crude nature the sign-off works: Chandler Parsons, after right knee surgery in 2015 and another surgery to repair a torn meniscus in the spring of 2016, is not an NBA-capable player at this point in his career because of ongoing injuries.

The terms are too simple and too dull to take in, what with Parsons dotting turns in Florida (where he went to college), Houston and especially Dallas with all manner of Bro Shots from various Lite Beer and Bottle Service charging stations throughout the American South.

During his time with the Mavericks, of course Parsons appealed to the tackier stylings of the NBA’s Frat Boy in Chief Mark Cuban, and the Mavs owner can’t help but shed an AXE-stinkin’ tear, set to the tune of a Train song, as he watches his former forward struggle from afar:

It must have crushed Cuban in a sense to leave his good friend available in last summer’s free agent market, but bros can be bros from July through September during the offseason – paying nearly $100 million for a free agent with one knee to play basketball at an expectedly high level is an entirely different subject altogether.

Mark Cuban will pay whatever it costs, in sensible basketball terms, for a champion. This is still the owner that passed on retaining Steve Nash because every basketball sense available (save for the one that later revealed Steve Nash to be superhuman) told us that Nash would not be worth the contract he eventually signed in Phoenix. Mark Cuban let Steve Nash go because his back, knee, Achilles and ankle woes didn’t figure to hold up through his 30s.

That’s Steve Nash, future (two-time!) MVP. Chandler Parsons, Pretty Good Forward, doesn’t exactly rank in the same conversation.

That didn’t mean the Memphis Grizzlies were out of their minds for taking a chance on a player who, even with most of his athleticism robbed, would still seem like a strong candidate to age well. Parsons does push 6-10, shooting remains a thing, and he’ll only turn 32 toward the end of 2020. That was the hope in the offseason, and it has no choice but to be the hope this late in the season.

With Parsons having (reportedly) offered nearly twice as many Instagram posts (65; including that shot with Vince Vaughn, straight out of central casting) than games (32) this season, Memphis coach David Fizdale dug in for the defense:

On Sunday, while helming a 36-27 team that is ranked No. 6 in the West, Fizdale revealed that Parsons will remain a starter:

The coach, working in his first year, is truly driving for a player that could still put his team over the top:

Sensible Mike Conley went, shockingly, sensible:

That came on Monday, a day and a half after Parsons more or less submitted not only to the suckier elements of his games from the past but also what he has to look forward to in what would be a tough return to relevance:

If the long process ever does bear fruit, however, the Grizzlies are in for a treat.

Chandler Parsons might be able to pull this off. He was a strong athlete prior to his series of knee ailments, and there is little in his past and play that would suggest that he wouldn’t be capable of enjoying a strong and significant career into his 30s as the sort of do-everything, tall and agile hybrid forward that have dotted fantastic playoff teams in years’ past.

Grizzlies fans don’t want to look at their modern-as-tomorrow (even if his playlist screams “2006!”) forward and think about Derrick McKey, or Sean Elliott, or the veteran years of Detlef Schrempf, but this is what Parsons could provide.

Providing on his end, of course, that he starts to make more than one-third of his basketball shots on average.

Memphis maven Geoff Calkins, who has seen a lot in those 32 games and 65 Instragram posts since Parsons’ Year 6 began, is intrigued as any at how this will work moving forward. From a follow-up discussion published in tandem with his interview with the forward:

Calkins and I have no idea what “intensity and duration” means, officially, to the Memphis Grizzlies, but that isn’t the point. If Parsons can grow into an indefatigable element, someone to run endlessly and finish broken plays at an efficient clip, then we appear to have found our on-court application of “intensity and duration.”

He has to be able to return to the realm of the average, though. While working through elements that his predecessors, sometimes happily, would not have had to deal with.

Clark Kellogg averaged nearly 19.5 points and 10 rebounds a game during his first three seasons with the Indiana Pacers from 1983 through 1985. He was an All-Rookie team member and even received a significant Converse endorsement while playing in Indianapolis, a rarity for a youngster working in what was still viewed as an ABA town. He played just 23 games from 1985 through 1987 before retiring that year, with knee injuries dimming what looked to be an All-Star-laden career at age 26.

It wasn’t as massive a deal when Clark Kellogg retired, that’s just what knees did back then, and he quickly established himself as a beloved basketball announcer in the years since. There were no paeans to his too-short career and too-early retirement, though, no long stretches of hand-wringing when he was an active player, and certainly no daily frustrations sent in from fans across the globe about Kellogg’s social media habits, and the purported role of those habits in the breakdown of human cartilage.

Chandler Parsons and his bum knee, not social media ubiquity and the presence of available bright-eyed Betties, created this hole. If Parsons shoots his way into obscurity, cast away from the Grizzlies and the NBA by extension, then by all accounts we shouldn’t have anything beyond his crappy knees to blame.

If Chandler Parsons does turn it around, though, it will be for the same reason franchises as disparate as Houston’s, Dallas’ and Memphis’ initially pounced on his services as a signee. The guy, when healthy, can play:

That’s all the characters your really need to explain this.

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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