Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Latest Fultz folly another part of Process to fail
Nothing has worked for the former No. 1 overall draft pick. So what’s next?
CAMDEN, N.J. >> Coaching didn’t work. An outsourced shooting expert in a backward baseball cap didn’t work. Rest? That didn’t work. Therapy? No. Starting him in NBA games, even though he had G-League skills? Didn’t work.
Those 150,000 shots he took in the summer? They failed.
Making him a millionaire? Nah. Didn’t do it.
Picking up the option on his contract to give him even more money? Sorry.
Twenty-thousand desperate fans nightly cheering his every awkward achievement? That didn’t help.
Removing his obligation to play shooting guard, and instead making him a backup point-guard only? Didn’t cut it.
None of it worked for Markelle Fultz. None of it made him close to a presentable major-league basketball player, other than a few times when the defenses played so far off him that it was professionally embarrassing and he was able to use the head start to convert on some drives. He can’t play. So what’s the next solution? Well … that he can’t play.
Though Elton Brand and Brett Brown both are at a loss to explain how it happened, evidently Fultz has experienced enough of a relapse of shoulder trouble that he will take some time off. According to Brand, that was ordered by Fultz’s agent, Raymond Brothers, who told the organization Tuesday that his client would not practice or play in games until seeing a shoulder specialist Monday in New York.
Never. It never ends with a player well on his way to being remembered as the most unqualified and unsuccessful No. 1 overall draft choice in modern NBA history.
“You know what?” Brown would say Tuesday, after a light practice. “Our definition of normal in this building and our program is probably different than most. And I’m personally fine with it. You just roll.”
Brown has been rolling around that operation for years, first made to tolerate an undignified rebuilding process that required him to lose games, more recently made to grow Fultz into something he is not. Brown’s perfect for the job, not just because of his splendid basketball mind, but for his ability to deal with an organization too infrequently able to get a lottery pick or a story correct.
The other night, Brown chose to play T.J. McConnell as his backup point guard in the second half, on a night when the suddenly deep-in-stars Sixers were struggling to outpoint the visiting, three-win Phoenix Suns. It worked. McConnell was typically vibrant at the defensive end and helpful on offense. Nor did Fultz make a scene. He’s not that way. Indeed, Fultz and McConnell are famously happy when either of them succeeds.
But a day after, there was the news, confirmed by Brand, that the agent had effectively pulled Fultz from the fray.
“I spoke to Raymond Brothers this morning and he stated that his recommendation was for Markelle to see a doctor in New York for a consultation,” Brand said. “He will not practice or play in a game until he does that. I said, ‘OK, when is that?’ He said it was Monday. Then we got off the phone.”
That’s how it works in a business that is not about shooting basketballs through hoops, but rather protecting the value of any individual player’s brand. Though Fultz has said repeatedly that injuries have not limited his ability to play this season, all it took was a call from an agent and suddenly the Sixers were down a point guard.
One call. And Fultz was out, for at least three games. Better still for him, he would not have to be made to answer why his foul shooting is so unsightly, why his defense is useless or why he is hesitant to shoot from distance.
“It’s in the collective bargaining agreement, it’s in the NBA by-laws, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to us,” Brown said. “I think that privilege, that right, is being exercised maybe more frequently nowadays. But it is a part of modern NBA basketball and professional sport, where an agent is trying to do his job. And this is how he has chosen to do it, under the umbrella of us trying to work collectively with everybody to not alienate, to not do anything else besides find a collaborative, fair, transparent plan and path. That is the objective.”
Fair? The Sixers have been more than fair with Fultz. That Brown had to start him just to prove that the franchise was giving him a chance was enough proof. Then Brand exercised the option to pick up Fultz’s contract for another year – a $12 million gratuity – was more. But what if that New York doctor finds that Fultz was never fully cured of the mysterious “scapular imbalance” that cost him 68 games last year? Would that be a reasonable escape clause for Brand to declare that contract extension void?
“I don’t want to look too far into that future,” the general manager said. “Let’s just wait until Monday and see what’s going on, then we can discuss something like that. I’m going to keep going back to saying we just want what’s best for him. I don’t want to put that out there.”
Notice what the general manager didn’t say? He didn’t say no. But at some point, the Sixers have to say no to Fultz. Maybe the specialist, whose name Brand couldn’t remember, can find something that a multi-million-dollar training complex full of organization-appointed sports scientists on the South Jersey waterfront keep failing to discover. Maybe that will cure Fultz and he can begin his career as a superstar.
If so, it would be a first. Because with Markelle Fultz, nothing ever, ever works.