Penarroya Confirms Partizan Building Team Without Parker
Partizan coach Joan Penarroya has confirmed for the first time that the club is building its roster for the 2026/27 season without Jabari Parker, even though the American still has a valid contract.
Ask Joan Penarroya how his Serbian is coming along, and he just laughs. “My Serbian is even worse than my English!” the Partizan coach said in a wide ranging interview with Mozzart Sport, adding that he has no plans to learn the language, since staying focused purely on the court works better for him that way. It is a harmless anecdote, but it captures the mood in which the black and whites are entering a new season, one full of loose ends and questions that no one at the club had been willing to fully answer until now.
One of those questions was finally settled in the same conversation. Penarroya confirmed publicly, for the first time, what had been whispered around Humska for months: Partizan is building its roster for the 2026/27 season without Jabari Parker.
Parker arrived in Belgrade last summer at Zeljko Obradovic’s explicit request, one of the loudest signings in the club’s recent history. The former No. 2 pick in the NBA draft never grew into the primary playmaking role the club expected of him, and by the second half of the season he was loaned out to Joventut Badalona in Spain. He showed signs of better form in Badalona, but the Spanish club could not match his Partizan salary, and he returned to Belgrade for preseason training this summer. He now trains separately from the team, while the club and his representatives look for a way to part ways, even though the American still holds a valid contract for next season and remains one of the highest paid players on the roster.
“This isn’t an easy situation. I hope we can resolve it quickly, above all for the club, but also for Jabari himself. He’s a good guy,” Penarroya said, before adding that the situation still leaves no room for ambiguity.
“What I can explain is that we are building a team without Parker for next season. That much is completely clear,” the Spanish coach said.
More interesting than the decision itself is the reason Penarroya gave for such a difficult transfer window. The coach says his biggest job this summer was not convincing Parker to leave, it was convincing other players to come.
“The hardest part was convincing players that Partizan is a great place for them. Everyone in Europe loves our atmosphere, but it isn’t easy to play here under pressure,” Penarroya explained, admitting that the club’s image around Europe took a hit after last season. According to him, Partizan’s budget is solid but not the largest in the Euroleague, so reinforcements were not won with money but with patience and a clear project, built on daily communication with club president Zarko Paspalj and sporting director Luka throughout the summer.
Fans, the coach admits, grew nervous watching players leave the club with no new arrivals coming in. That quiet stretch now has an explanation: the club was waiting for the right moments, not the first offers that came along.
The roster is not finished, though. Partizan still needs a player for the three-two spot and a big man who can stretch the floor with his shot, ideally one capable of playing both the four and the four-five. The injury to Vanja Marinkovic complicates things further, while four players are currently away on national team duty. Carlik Jones is, in Penarroya’s words, one of the best point guards in the competition, but the coach stops short of naming him the team’s sole leader, saying the roster will need more than one voice in the locker room. Ethan Thompson, unlike Jones, is only in his first European experience, and Penarroya is asking for patience while the American adjusts to the new court and the new pace of play.
Penarroya is keeping his ambitions for the season modest. He is not promising a Final Four run, just a fight in every game, and points to a match Partizan’s football counterpart played against Getafe, where fans applauded the players regardless of the result because they saw them fight until the final whistle.
Parker’s case, by all indications, will not wait for the season to start. The club wants a resolution before the Euroleague’s opening round, and until one is found, the American will keep training alone while Partizan fills out its roster without him.
