Korkmaz is starting to make a difference

PHILADELPHIA >> Furkan Korkmaz didn’t know why it was happening, or for how long it would last. He didn’t know where he stood with the 76ers, of if he had a future at all. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong or what he should have done better.

All he knew, six weeks ago, was that the Sixers had a plan, and that he was not involved.

“I feel I didn’t get that real opportunity to show what I’ve got,” he said at the time. “I just want to play. I just want to get on the court.” It was a fair plea for any pro athlete who’d spent one season shuffling between the NBA and the minor leagues, then the early part of the next rarely playing at all. And it was a necessary wail for a talented forward whose contract option was not picked up for another season.

Successful internationally, Korkmaz was a firstround 76ers pick in the 2016 draft. At 6-7, he could play multiple positions, and he had been recognized as a star-to-be in his native Turkey before the age of 15. Last summer, he dropped 40 points for the Sixers in a summer league game after a rookie year punctured by a broken foot. It was his time. Yet, the Sixers kept indicating otherwise. Naturally, they picked up the option year on Ben Simmons’ contract. Strangely, they did the same for Markelle Fultz. But when the deadline came and went, Korkmaz still had not been offered the extension, or much of an explanation why.

“I will try to see what my options are,” he would say. “If I am not getting minutes here, I just want to look for other options. I don’t know what the other options are at this point.”

If they were any, they were limited. One would be to play the season out and become a free agent. The other? That was the one that impressed Brett Brown.

“He didn’t,” the Sixers’ coach said, “roll over.”

Things change quickly in the NBA, where injuries mount, trades happen and opportunities can bubble and be maximized. So it has been for Korkmaz who, for all of those reasons, found himself Wednesday in the starting lineup for a game against the Brooklyn Nets. With Jimmy Butler scratched with a groin injury and Fultz out of sight, an opportunity had opened. Brown considered plugging Butler’s spot with Landry Shamet, but preferred to keep his rookie shooter in a comfortable rotation. So there was Korkmaz, once so lost in the mix that the Sixers barely cared if he’d stay or go, trusted to fill in for a four-time All-Star.

And why not? Didn’t he provide a career-high 18 points, seven rebounds, an assist and a steal in 25 minutes of a victory Monday over Detroit? And isn’t that why the Sixers drafted him, to make a difference, not just to fill out a roster?

“Things are changing very quickly here,” Korkmaz said. “After the trade (for Butler), I started to find more opportunities here. I have been talking to the coaching staff and telling them I would be ready at any time. And I was ready.”

The Sixers could have locked Korkmaz down for just over $2 million for next season. When they passed on that, they took a risk. If Korkmaz continued to improve, earn more playing time, help win games and show why he was a consistent awardwinner at every level of international youth play, he could become an intriguing free agent. The Sixers, though, would be able to pay him no more than that $2 million, while others could grab him for slightly more.

That makes Korkmaz something of an odd organizational fit. The Sixers need him to provide shooting in a long, long season. But if they wish to maximize his value, they might have to move him before the Feb. 7 trade deadline.

“Things are changing really quickly here,” Korkmaz said. “Right now, and for the rest of the season, for the organization, for the coaching staff, I cannot make any comment about it. I just have to keep working and being professional. And when that opportunity comes, I just have to show that I can play.”

If the opportunities continue, Korkmaz will have to defend. Since he had not shown an overwhelming capacity to do so, that best explained his lack of early-career opportunities. But he was a responsible defender against Detroit and is coming to understand that, in the big league, there is no demand for a one-way player.

“We feel that his future is going to be correlated to his body, in getting him stronger and bigger,” Brown said. “We feel that his future will be directly correlated to his ability to defend. Are you going to be able to keep the game in front of you? But I think at 20 years old or thereabouts, he’s a real prospect.”

That is the decision facing the Sixers: Is Korkmaz a budding star? And if so, how can they keep him around?

“I like the bounce that he has, the fact that he can make a shot, the fact that he does have size,” Brown said. “From what we’ve seen so far, you have to walk away quite encouraged. What is his upside? Where will he end up? I don’t know. He’s a high-character person. He has played basketball at a high level for a long time. Where that ends up, I do not know.”

Where it has led is to a spot start. Given the situation just weeks earlier, that said plenty.

“As the situation unfolded and he received opportunity,” Brown said, “he has not disappointed.”

It’s what happens when a talented basketball player chooses not to go away.

To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery