Jayson Tatum’s success doesn’t mean Markelle Fultz was a bad decision
Boston Celtics rookie Jayson Tatum is off to a strong start, but that doesn’t mean Markelle Fultz — or the trade to get him — was a bad decision by the Philadelphia 76ers.
Analysis tends to run black-and-white too often. People want to compare players in a vacuum, rather than taking into consideration the nuances of situational differences. That has overwhelmingly been the case with reactions to Markelle Fultz’s season so far.
Fultz’s shoulder issues led to him changing his shot. That’s a near-certainty, and was the starting point for what has been a massive slump to kick off his career. Through his first four games with the Philadelphia 76ers, Fultz refused to take long-range shots while seldom exploring outside the lane when it came to the offensive end of the floor.
That’s a concern for somebody who hit 41.3 percent of his deep balls in college while attempting 126 in total during the short NCAA season. His perimeter prowess was largely what got him drafted No. 1, as well as what led the Sixers to trade away both the third pick and a future pick in order to get him.
Philadelphia 76ers
With his career now off to a not-so-seamless start, people have began to bash the Sixers for their decision-making — and a large reason why has been the success of Jayson Tatum. Boston used the Sixers’ old No. 3 pick to nab the swingman from Duke, who has since averaged 15.2 points per game in an expanded role following the season-ending injury to Gordon Hayward.
As Tatum flies and Fultz rides the bench with shoulder soreness, those talking points will only become more prevalent. Since Boston essentially flipped picks and got back another asset, the fact that Philly a) passed on Tatum and b) traded up to get Fultz is something they can use to fuel the proverbial fire when it comes to criticizing the long-controversial Sixers’ rebuild.
There are some serious flaws in that logic, though, with Fultz’s long-term outlook being the most obvious. Once his shoulder’s right, there’s a real chance he returns to form. We’ve only seen a handful of games, and expecting him to be definitively bad for the rest of his career as a result is downright foolish.
Fultz was the consensus top prospect for a reason, and him regaining confidence and rectifying his release issues could easily elevate him above Tatum once again.
There’s also some hindsight that plays into this. Even if Tatum does end up being the better prospect and Fultz’s shoulder snowballs into a career-altering problem — which there’s no indication that it could or will — Philadelphia had no way of knowing Fultz’s play would differ so drastically at the NBA level.
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He was as far from a non-shooter as prospects get, and that’s the kind of development that simply isn’t predictable in an NBA Draft that often follows unpredictable trends. It’s in some ways similar to the Sixers’ decision to draft Jahlil Okafor back in 2015, when he was still the undisputed top prospect when taken off the board at three.
Hindsight is something we can’t ignore in arguments like this. If Fultz was incapable of shooting jumpers in workouts, it’s unlikely that Bryan Colangelo and company would’ve pulled the trigger — either on the trade or the pick itself.
There’s no reason to expect that Tatum would’ve been the selection at No. 3 had the Sixers kept their pick either. It’s not like a two-question multiple choice quiz in which Fultz and Tatum were the only possible answers.
And again — we’re only two weeks into the NBA season. So much can and will change between now and the primes of their careers that the majority of this discussion will be a moot point regardless. You can’t use Tatum’s early success as a way to degrade Fultz or the Sixers’ decision making.
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It just doesn’t work.