Is it realistic to expect Markelle Fultz to play this season?
Friday was still a day of celebration for much of the Delaware Valley, a once-starved fan base still basking in the glow of the Eagles championship parade, a majestic celebration of the city's improbable group of champions.
The scene at the Wells Fargo Center, in some ways, could have been viewed as a celebration as well. A celebration of a long rebuild coming into focus. A celebration of Joel Embiid showing once again why he can be a future MVP candidate, shutting down superstar Anthony Davis while dominating the Pelicans to the tune of 24 points and 16 rebounds in 25 minutes of play. A celebration of Ben Simmons and his electrifying talents, already playing at a near All-Star level, and a celebration of Dario Saric and his
evolution into a three-point sniper to complement his wondrous basketball IQ, showcased by Saric dropping 24 points on 11 field-goal attempts, while mixing in 4 assists from the power forward spot.
The addition of those three talents over the 24-month span between June 2014 and June 2016 has always had the chance to steer the Sixers toward not just relevance, but legitimate contention, and last night's wire-to-wire win over the New Orleans Pelicans put that progress into perfect perspective.
But even with those major decisions looking like they're working out, and potentially in a big way, many other decisions will need to go the Sixers' way in order to have yet another parade down Broad Street.
One of those decisions is the selection of Markelle Fultz, a player fans are particularly invested in not just because of how his skill set as a dynamic middle pick-and-roll threat could bring this core to completion, but also because of how much of the Sixers' treasure trove of assets they gave up in order to have the right to draft him. With two likely top-6 picks invested in Fultz, how his career plays out can swing this rebuild into any number of different directions.
Sixers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo stood in front of the media yesterday, ostensibly to talk about the NBA trade deadline, which came and went without a single transaction by the team. That's fine. With the Sixers now standing at 27-25 following yesterday's win, a favorable schedule to end the season and, knock on wood, a healthy roster, making the playoffs, even with this woeful bench, is a very realistic possibility.
Were there moves out there which could have made the 2017-18 Sixers better? Definitely. Was that very short-term improvement worth depleting future assets and limiting flexibility to push the chips in when the time calls for it? Unlikely.
The non-moves were defensible, and in some ways reassuring for a fan base which has bought into the notion having the longest view in the room, a viewpoint which has started to pay off as Embiid, despite missing his first two seasons, became the first member of the 2014 draft class to be selected to the All-Star game. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
What yesterday's press conference turned into was instead a desperate attempt to get any information possible on the very bizarre rookie season of Markelle Fultz.
Fultz's rookie season has never been normal, not from the moment he launched that first malformed free-throw in practice, a shot he insisted was just him “trying to look at different ways to see how the ball can go in the hoop.” A month of ugly jump shots later and the diagnosis of scapular muscle imbalance came down, with a re-evaluation period set to three weeks.
From that point until early January Fultz's return was relatively normal, or at least as normal as an ever-changing timeline, with no details given as to
why, could be considered.
But the fan base has been conditioned to accept perpetually evolving timelines with vague status updates. It wasn't long ago that we watched Embiid's bone bruise turn into an insignificant meniscus tear, which, as everything Sixers related does, eventually morphed into a significant, season-ending meniscus tear after weeks of Embiid being erroneously listed as day-to-day. We all remember a hopeful Brett Brown talking about Simmons potentially returning in January, the infamous “final scan” which took place on January 21, 2017, only to watch as the clock ticked down and Simmons was ruled out for the season a little more than a month later.
This front office has long ago lost the benefit of the doubt from many Sixers fans, a statement which, in a weird way, helped shield Fultz as this situation unfolded.
As the Sixers gave vague update after vague update about Fultz, it was easy to assume substantial progress was being made off the court. For fans to direct that anger and frustration toward the front office, projecting an organizational weakness (communication) that, while annoying, is also nothing new, it kept hope alive for Markelle Fultz, the part of this equation that really matters in the end.
Then, on January 2, the Sixers sent out yet another vague update on Fultz, indicating he was in the final stages of his “return-to-play program.” This was followed by Fultz returning to 5-on-5 practices a week later, a step which, at the time, seemed very significant. As strange, and as unexplained, as the previous two-plus months had been, at the very least it seemed the whole fiasco was about to be in the team's rear-view mirror.
These updates had two major consequences. First, it raised fans' expectations about Fultz's return, expectations which now, nearly six weeks later, have turned into frustrations. Second, it allowed fans, by way of videos from the press, to get direct access to the progress Fultz was making, no longer reliant on the vague and obscure press releases from the team.
The “final stages” press release sounded sort of like a timeline, at least in the Sixers' completely unique and non-committal way, indicating he was close to returning. The January 11 game against the Celtics, in London, seemed a natural fit for Fultz's re-introduction to the NBA court considering how many practices the Sixers had leading up to the game, practices which were otherwise few and far between at that point in the season. But it didn't happen. Many then speculated about the game against the Raptors on January 15, showcasing the highly-coveted No. 1 overall selection in the 2017 draft in front of the home crowd. That didn't happen, either.
As days turned into weeks, all that fans had to judge Fultz's progress in his “return-to-play program” were the videos of his shooting, the only real tangible way to judge a shoulder injury that sapped away his ability to confidently shoot a basketball. But the jumpers were inconsistent, at best. Some of them looked good, others bad, and none of them really showed anything, outside of free-throws, beyond 10 or 12 feet.
That seemed fine as a starting point, something to live with back in early January, but the lack of demonstrable progress over the weeks that ensued made some question whether it was realistic to expect Fultz to return this season.
That left fans eager to receive any kind of explanation from the front office that might be able to provide some semblance of hope. If there was ever a time for Colangelo to show his PR chops and reassure a troubled fan base, this was it. Instead, fans fearing the worst were given even more reason to question whether Fultz would return this season.
“There's always a chance that he's going to be out there soon, and there's a chance that he's not going to play this year. I can't answer that question because we don't know the answer to that,” Colangelo told reporters yesterday. “We hope to see him this year. If not we will wait until he's ready.”
The problem, at this stage of the game, isn't the injury itself. On December 9, two months ago to the day, it had been declared that Fultz was no longer experiencing soreness in his shoulder and that the scapular muscle imbalance was resolved. The current problem, according to Colangelo, is that Fultz has had to completely re-train the muscle memory needed to make a jump shot.
“He's literally re-training his shooting mechanics right now,” Colangelo said. “That injury led to a lack of muscle control and coordination of his muscles, and through physical therapy and strength and conditioning, and now increasing basketball activities, he's regaining his form.”
Asked what, exactly, Fultz's range currently is, Colangelo provided a sobering answer of “It's within the paint, basically,” essentially confirming the accuracy of the constantly dissected videos posted over the past few weeks.
That lack of progress is the key concern. On November 19, the Sixers sent out a statement that Fultz would “begin progressing toward full basketball activities,” and that his return to play would be determined by how his shoulder responded over the next two to three weeks. On December 9 they announced the imbalance was resolved and the soreness gone. Given that amount of time, Fultz's range being confined to within the paint makes it almost impossible to imagine that ground being made up in time for a return this season.
The team won't say so, not definitively at least, but if there's one major takeaway from yesterday it's the sobering reality that many of our worst fears were confirmed, and Fultz's season appears to be very much in jeopardy.
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The Sixers have given scant few updates on one of the most perplexing cases in recent memory, an injury Colangelo acknowledged he has never seen before in basketball, an injury the team has proven time and time again that's either impossible, or impossible for them, to project a timeline for. That led to some contentiousness as the media, having the ability to ask Colangelo at length about the nature of the injury for the first time since October, tried to get answers for a fan base desperate to hear them.
The constant focus on Fultz led Colangelo to ask whether anybody had any questions about the trade deadline. We didn't. After two more questions about Fultz came in the PR staff cut the press conference short and Colangelo departed, declining to answer further questions thrown his way about the point guard the Sixers gave up so much to acquire.
Colangelo has to explain away an elite prospect who has to re-train his muscles to shoot a basketball, an almost impossible situation to be in. Once it became obvious Fultz wasn't close to returning, there wasn't going to be a non-frustrating answer for Colangelo to provide the fans with. Agitation was inevitable.
But Colangelo nailed the trifecta. He seemingly confirmed the worst possible fears many fans had by stating Fultz's range, two months after declaring the imbalance was gone, is confined to the paint. He acknowledged there is no timeline for Fultz's return, and that missing the rest of the season is on the table. And, after four months to prepare a better explanation, either one containing the truth or one protecting his player, he continued to suggest that Fultz intentionally changing his shot over the summer could have been the very cause of the injury.
Damage control is not this organization's strong suit, and fans were left even more confused, and even more concerned over Fultz's availability for the remainder of the season, than they were going in.
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After the press conference, reporters were let in for the morning's shootaround. As is usually the case, many began filming Fultz, who was working with a coach on the opposite end of the floor.
Guard J.J. Redikk, running through shooting drills on the court closest to reporters, voiced his displeasure at what was going on.
“All that,” Redikk said, talking to a coach while pointing to all the reporters filming Fultz. “Kid's fukking 19 man. shyt. … Ya'll are sick, man.”
“I understand that fans want to see his progress, but this is maybe going to be a longer process than we all hoped for,” Redikk continued, after being brought over for an interview. “But I don't get coming in here every day to watch him shoot pull-up jumpers. That's a little obsessive.”
Redikk has the proper response, and perspective, for a teammate of Fultz, and for a leader of this young team. His focus should be on sticking up for Fultz and providing support as he goes through his rehabilitation.
But the team has consistently said Fultz's return will be dictated by his jump shot, and that makes the status of his jump shot a major story around the team. The team has also struggled to give any sort of reliable timeline, so when they put Fultz out in front of the media it's the media's job to report on the story and provide the information the fans so desperately seek.
It's simply the case of two sides with different perspectives.
