Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Fultz only fits as backup PG
PHILADELPHIA » For roughly one 15-minute stretch, in a game the Sixers needed, to the delight of an interested capacity crowd, Markelle Fultz would play like his draft status said he should play.
For one burst of excellence, over the late third quarter and the early fourth, he seemed comfortable with the ball, aware of his responsibilities, willing to shoot, willing to score. For one night, then, in what would be a victory over the Charlotte Hornets Saturday night, he was … “Really good,” Brett Brown said. And why was he really good? Because he was playing the only position he should be expected to play in pro basketball. He was good because he was playing point guard. That’s why he was good. So where’s the mystery?
Why the continued determination of Brown and the Sixers to start him at a shooting guard position, in some bizarre experiment? Why the disruption of what the organization’s analytics department had determined was the most efficient starting lineup in the NBA last season, just to give J.J. Redick’s starting job to Fultz?
Why the hesitation to just admit it: The second-year pro can be a serviceable, middle-of-the-game, change-of-pace point guard. Period. “There is zero doubt in my mind that is his best position now,” Brown was saying Monday, before a game against the Atlanta Hawks. “I’ve said that since we started doing this. I am not pivoting out of that at all. Right now, that’s his best position.”
Where that grows complicated is that point guard is also Ben Simmons’ best position, and Ben Simmons is an All-Star-caliber difference-maker. Fultz, if he is to succeed at all in the pro game, is a 15-minute-a-night, mid-game, backup point guard. But it’s Brown’s determination that the only way for the top overall pick in the 2017 draft to be at his best in April is to start him alongside Simmons in October, November and, perhaps, later. That, though, has been unsightly.
As uncomfortable as Fultz can appear playing off the ball early, however, he can appear useful somewhere in the traditional lull of an NBA game, showing speed and fluid ball handling in the open floor against other backup and tiring players. So he was Saturday, on a night when the Sixers could not afford to run a losing streak to three, scoring four points, making a steal and assist, and turning the ball over just once, almost exclusively at the point.
“He was pushing the ball in the open court,” Brown said. “When we can get him in early offense, in open court, and he’s thinking, ‘Attack the rim, get to the paint, and go there to dunk.’
“I told him this: ‘Go like you’re going to get 50. Go like you’re going to dunk everything, and then the world will make sense. The game will speak to you.’”
He’s not going to score 50. Ever. He didn’t show anything near that capacity in what had been his best game. But he did play with a certain comfort level. And if the plan is to ease him out of whatever stress he had as a rookie to perform to his draft pedigree, then it’s time to let him be the player his skill suggests.
Fultz’s defense, which is suspect against fast guards and was non-existent in a recent matchup with Detroit’s Ish Smith, is troubling at any position. For that, he cannot dislodge ferocious defender T.J. McConnell from the point-guard rotation. But in a 48-minute game, there could be some minutes for a former No. 1 overall pick that the Sixers don’t want to give up on without a reasonable audition.
“What can he be?” Brown said. “Where can he go to? I don’t know. But his best position right now is at point guard.”
Then why does he keep starting a young player struggling with his professional coming-ofage on the perimeter?
“So I can give him court time,” Brown said. “And play him with our guys.”
He wants to give Fultz time with Joel Embiid, Simmons and Dario Saric. In theory, that support staff would make anyone a better player. But something else was clear Saturday: In the final five minutes, Brown would go with Embiid, Simmons, Saric, Robert Covington and Redick. That’s how the Sixers won that game.
“We have been in multiple situations where we have needed to win games,” Simmons said. “We’ve lost games having that same team, but we have won games. We are definitely comfortable in that situation, in that five.”
At some point, that will be the five that starts games, too. There is no other way for the Sixers to function as a championship-minded team. And when that happens, it will reduce Fultz to a backup. But it will also release whatever value he has to an NBA team.
Before the game Monday, Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce, Brown’s former Sixers assistant, gave Fultz a bear hug. Once the game started, though, Pierce had his defenders literally give him 10 feet of room. Starting at the two spot, Fultz was typically hesitant to shoot from outside, and the Sixers had a slow start.
But he played some at the point later in the first quarter, and was presentable. And if the Sixers can at least draw presentable basketball out of him in lesser, more comfortable roles, they will have done the best they can to salvage a draft-night disaster.