Colangelo’s Fultz defense remains impossible to buy

Would make same move all over again

Jayson Tatum scored 118 points over five playoff games, ejecting the 76ers from an NBA Eastern Conference tournament that they had a strong chance to win. Markelle Fultz scored none.

With that, Bryan Colangelo faced the same decision that he butchered 11 months earlier.

With that, he butchered it again.

“Not an ounce of buyer’s remorse,” the Sixers’ president and general manager would say Friday. And with that, he had taken a tragically incorrect choice and doubled down. He would choose Fultz, not Tatum, if he had it to do over again, and he would not apologize.

Maybe Colangelo was being a businessman, not a basketball man, and was scrambling to keep whatever value Fultz had left from disappearing along with the rookie’s jump shot, confidence and ability to play basketball. Maybe he was dusting him off for a sale, in the unlikely event that anyone would care to buy a $6 million a year player who can’t shoot. Or maybe he is just unable to admit that his draftday deal to climb to the top spot and select Fultz, leaving Tatum to Boston at No. 3, was another failed pick in a series of too many.

But Colangelo was determined to select Fultz last June. And he was determined at his exit interview with the press Friday to predict it will prove to be the right choice some other time. That was as if there was something wrong with showing it this time.

“You can look at the results of this playoff series and draw a conclusion very quickly,” Colangelo said. “We made the deal to put ourselves in a position to select a player that was the best fit for this team and this roster moving forward, and still feel that way. Jayson is a great talent. I am very proud of what he has done. He was very high on our board. But when you make a deal and move forward, you do it with purpose and you do it with reason, and we had our reasons why we moved forward with that.

“I’m very complimentary of Jayson Tatum and what he has been able to accomplish. You look at the year of work that he put in, not quite at the level of what he’s done in the playoffs, and it just speaks to him. They should be very proud of what they accomplished. But deals are judged immediately all the time and we live in that world and I understand it. But our future is our future and Markelle’s future is bright.”

It’s not bright. It’s cloudy at best, if it has not already been blown away in a tornado of inefficient draft-day maneuvering unmatched since that time Harold Katz tried Brad Daugherty out in his driveway, concluded that he was not worth the trouble, and approved moving the top overall pick. The Sixers have had a rebuilding process going for five years, one that required losing in order to win premium drafting position. But they blew a No. 3 overall pick on Jahlil Okafor, whom the Nets won’t even start. And Colangelo had a “kick me” sign taped to him by Danny Ainge, who lured him into swapping two picks for one so he could have Tatum and the Sixers could entertain that portion of their fan base suffering from Stockholm Syndrome with the very idea of Fultz-as-asuperstar.

So lost was Colangelo in his own story Friday that he didn’t even acknowledge that he traded two first-round picks for that right to be wrong. “It cost us one first-round pick,” he said, “just for clarity.” Just for clarity, the Sixers surrendered their first-round pick and another first-round pick for Fultz. But that was just one of Colangelo’s word games in a flood of plenty. At least he was truthful enough to admit that there was “no technicality” attached to the trade that would have prevented him from selecting Tatum, once he had his choice of the entire draft pool. But all that did was underline that he had made a horrible decision.

“We effectively selected Markelle with the future in mind,” Colangelo said. “Obviously, he had somewhat of a setback this year with his injury and recovery and overcoming this re-training of his shot, effectively.”

If Colangelo wanted a project, a player for the future, a young piece with an ability to develop, he should have traded down to No. 20. Any trade up to No. 1 is for a player who can help immediately, the way Tatum helped immediately. But it grew clear early that Fultz was a GLeague talent, overhyped by Draftnik Nation despite the reality that he has no one particular elite skill.

“I think he was the consensus No. 1 pick for a reason,” Colangelo said. “He was the player we traded up for with the future in mind as the best player for this organization. Markelle had an elite package of offensive talents, shot-creation, ability to get to the rim, finishing over length at the college level, shooting shots from all over the court. I think the only thing he is lacking now is perhaps the shooting aspect of things. But every player makes an adjustment when they get to the league.”

Take the shooting out of it and what happens is that the head coach refuses to put him in a game, even in a playoff series that is about to cost him a season. Brett Brown said plenty Friday about how high he is on Fultz. That’s his job. He said more last week by sitting him. That’s his job too. And if that wasn’t a message to the front office, then Colangelo wasn’t listening.

Brown said he would like Fultz to play in the summer league. Colangelo was not ready to commit to that. So brace for another offseason of the Sixers hiding their mistakes behind a locked gate in Camden.

For 118 reasons, it will be a longer offseason than necessary, whether Bryan Colangelo is remorseful about that or not.