No. 1 pick Markelle Fultz's nightmare rookie season keeps getting worse
Markelle Fultz, drafted No. 1 overall by the Philadelphia 76ers after they traded up from third to first in the deal that got the Celtics Jayson Tatum, has played in only four NBA games, injuries having wiped out the rest of his career so far.
And if indications from his rehab are anything to go by, it will be next season before he hoists up that janky jump shot of his again.
76ers GM Bryan Colangelo told reporters that there is no timeline for Fultz’s return, including no promise that he’ll play another game.
Fultz has been shooting as part of his rehab, but Colangelo said the rookie is restricted to “within the paint, basically. Paint shots. Perimeter shots are where you kind of draw a line.”
So throwing a ball less than 15 feet at a rim is all well and good, but the 3-point range you expect an NBA guard to have? Nope.
Colangelo did hedge his words a bit, answering the question of whether Fultz would return with a cagey non-answer:
“There’s always a chance that he’s going to be out there soon, and there’s a chance that he’s not going to play this year. I can’t answer that question because we don’t know the answer.”
When asked if Fultz had been medically cleared, Colangelo again failed to give a straight answer:
“He’s doing some things on the basketball court, in the limited basketball activity that he’s taking place in, that he’s participating in, and he’s dazzling in many ways. But when he’s ready to help his team and be ready, I can’t give you a timeline.”
Four players in NBA history did not play a game in their rookie season due to injury or, in one case, military commitment.
Ben Simmons, Blake Griffin and Greg Oden were hurt in their first year, while David “The Admiral” Robinson served in the U.S. Navy after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1987.
All of them eventually played; Robinson had a Hall of Fame career.
You have to go all the way back to 1951, when first-overall pick Gene Melchiorre played in zero NBA games after the then-Baltimore Bullets picked him, to find a No. 1 pick who never played at all. He was banned for life for his role in the infamous college basketball point-shaving scandal surrounding the 1950 NCAA championship game between Melchiorre’s Bradley team and City College of New York.
The biggest consequence of the injury has been to twist and mangle Fultz’s shot into a horrifying basketball equivalent of Charles Barkley’s golf swing:
The closest example of a player losing it this badly? Possibly baseball, where there’s even a term for it: “Steve Blass disease,” after the Pirates pitcher who inexplicably forgot how to pitch in 1973. Similar examples, involving catcher Mackey Sasser losing the ability to throw a ball back to the pitcher or second baseman Chuck Knoblauch throwing live balls into the third row of the stands rather than to first base, ended careers.
Fultz himself, speaking on the subject of his shot to TNT’s Caron Butler, said, “It’s been a long journey just trying to relearn it. I’m just going through it, and I want to get back out there as quick as I can.”
It remains to be seen whether Fultz’s case of the yips is the real reason his shoulder is still “injured” — and whether it might prove fatal to his career, turning him into a strong candidate for the biggest first-pick bust in post-merger NBA history and making LaRue Martin and Anthony Bennett look like first-ballot Hall of Famers by comparison.
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