Sixers’ top pick ready for the next big prize
Top pick plans to be game’s greatest, get Sixers to playoffs this season
“We want to turn the team around and build the brand of the Sixers, on and off the court. These guys are great guys. You see (Joel) Embiid, Ben (Simmons). They are great... We will try to get to the playoffs. The future is bright. That’s all I can say.” – Markelle Fultz
CAMDEN, N.J. » The 76ers’ era of tolerance is over, and Friday, Markelle Fultz was the first to shout-out that all-clear.
Next season, not the year after, or the year after that, or five years after that, the Sixers will be in the playoffs. Fultz, the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft Thursday, will not be satisfied otherwise.
“Yeah,” Fultz said. “And I am serious when I say that. I am not just talking because I am a player. I really believe we can do that.”
Not that it was forbidden in recent years for Sixers personnel — on court or off — to demand, expect or promise a spot in the postseason, but it was close. Early last season, Joel Embiid endeavored to flip the idea around the locker room, though with no resulting wave of public, press or front office support. But as the Sixers gained the No. 1 overall draft choice for a second consecutive season, Fultz, for one, viewed it as something more than a tickethuckstering opportunity.
“We want to turn the team around and build the brand of the Sixers, on and off the court,” Fultz said, a day after the draft, after a formal introductory press conference on the Sixers’ practice floor. “These guys are great guys. You see (Joel) Embiid, Ben (Simmons). They are great. So we will try to turn the program around. We will try to get to the playoffs.
“The future is bright. That’s all I can say.”
Given the changing structure in the middle of the Eastern Conference, the concept of the Sixers playing beyond Game No. 82 is reasonable. Jimmy Butler has left the Bulls and Paul George could be traded by the Pacers. Both Chicago and Indianapolis were playoff teams last season. The Sixers, who made an 18-game jump from a 10-win team in 2016 to 28 wins last season, should be in the mix for one of those spots likely to be open.
As for how that would happen, they are still short on specifics. By Friday, Brett Brown was resisting sending in his hat size for the championship baseball caps, though, with a gleam in his eye, strongly suggested that the topic would be more appropriate after the free-agent season.
Fultz, though, was not quite as patient. His plan to help simply is to become the greatest ever to play basketball. That’s all. The greatest? Ever? “My first goal was to get to the NBA and be the No. 1 pick,” said Fultz, who thus is a quick 2-for-2. “But that’s another goal that I set for myself. And I know it’s not going to be easy. There are a lot of greats and I have a lot of respect for them, M.J. (Michael Jordan) and everybody. But that’s a goal that I’ve got for myself.”
And where would that target be placed? Who is, in Fultz’s opinion, the GOAT?
“M.J.,” he replied, with a tinge of amazement that the question might even be raised.
As the No. 1 overall pick in any draft, that is not a preposterous suggestion, even as Fultz issued it literally within sight of the retired-number banners of, among others, Wilt Chamberlain, Julius Erving and Allen Iverson, also a No. 1 overall NBA draft choice.
“He went to Georgetown, so I watched some of his games when he came back home,” said Fultz, 19, of Upper Marlboro, Md. “Everybody knows A.I., and that he is known for the crossover. He was a very talented player and they loved him here. Following behind him is going to be tough, but I am looking forward to it.”
The consensus of draft analysts was that there was no more qualified prospect than Fultz to achieve legendary status, and the Sixers took it further and spent two first-round draft choices for the right to fit him into a backcourt with Simmons. Though Fultz has established Jordan as his baseline for career success, most know-it-alls liken him to James Harden for his ability to score from various positions on the floor and his expertise in pickand-roll execution.
“It’s an honor to be compared to James Harden,” Fultz said. “I look at that as something good. And my goal is to be the best that ever played. That’s my goal. And to do that, I will work hard and take it wherever it takes me. But that’s my goal.”
He wants to be the best player.
And he wants to be the best player on a team that reaches the postseason.
Hey … is that permitted around there?
“Joel will come out and do something similar,” Brown said, smiling. “How can you not respect it? He’s 19. Joel is full of life and personality, and very funny by the way. And you want them feeling like that. I think oftentimes, you circle back. And if it’s delivered, you’ve got to own it. You have to practice like that. You’ve got to be that. It’s not just words. I think it’s perhaps ammunition at times, to remind them of statements and to help them achieve their end-game goals.
“My players will speak. And I look at them knowing that their heart is in the right place. And I think it’s just a reflection in a belief — the belief they have in what is going on around them.”