We’re at the point, now, where practice court videos of a close-to-healthy Markelle Fultz taking unbearably bad-looking jumpers are just sad and infuriating. What the fuck happened? Who did this? Who can I yell at, right now, about what has happened. Anyway, God, look at this:
It’s incredible to think that we’re just a couple months down the road from a time when every draft expert on earth had Fultz as a can’t-miss offensive centerpiece. Unreal. Another problem for Fultz, right now—beyond that his jumper looks nothing at all like what an NBA guard’s jumper should look like, nor anything like what his relatively lovely and smooth and repeatable jumper looked like in college—is this:
You can decide for yourself whether that godawful mess in those videos represents an ability to shoot a basketball. If his shoulder is structurally sound and he’s still shooting like that, man, I don’t know. If the Sixers are waiting around to see the player they drafted, so they can put that guy on the floor, they might be waiting a long, long time. Possibly forever.