Comments made by Philadelphia 76ers General Manager Bryan Colangelo reveal that Markelle Fultz may not take the court until the 2018-19 season.
Well, this sucks.
You know, I really thought he’d be different. After Nerlens Noel, Joel Embiid (twice), and Ben Simmons, I thought to myself, “There’s no possible way that we could have a star rookie sit out for a full season FIVE years in a row, right? I mean, four has to be the max. The basketball gods wouldn’t curse us like that. Right?”
What an arrogant fool I was to question the gods. Now they punish us for our hubris, and no amount of sacrifices can change their mind. (But if we had to sacrifice someone, it would definitely be Jerryd Bayless. Just saying.)
Anyway, here’s what Bryan Colangelo said:
Colangelo on Fultz: "It was a breakdown in muscle function and coordination...There have been some limitations for some time and he's getting through it. Again, there's a long recovery. It's taken probably longer than anyone had hoped or imagined."#sixers
— Derek Bodner (@DerekBodnerNBA) February 9, 2018
Bryan Colangelo on Markelle Fultz: "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 to that."
— Jessica Camerato (@JessicaCamerato) February 9, 2018
Why can’t Philly have nice things!!?!? I mean I guess we did win the Super Bowl so… I can’t really complain. But in like, a month, I’m allowed to complain again. And that’s a right I never fail to exercise.
Future implications
All fear-mongering aside, how does this impact the Sixers moving forward? Looking on the bright side, it actually doesn’t change too much. This looked to be a team on course to be slightly above .500 before the season started, and that’s still the path we’re on at the moment. If Fultz doesn’t play, we won’t get any worse, we just won’t necessarily get that much better.
Rookies, especially rookie point guards, often hurt their teams anyway in terms of wins and losses. Perhaps there’s an argument to be made that having Fultz out for the whole season will allow him to really focus on himself and develop his game like Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid did when they were out, and come back a better player next year.
In the meantime, the rest of our young team can continue on and get valuable playoff experience (I’d be satisfied with taking the Raptors to six games or something like that), whereas integrating Fultz late in the season might mess up chemistry/rotations and he might just not be that good in his first few real games as a pro.
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Although Colangelo stood pat at the trade deadline, we definitely could still use more backcourt depth though, especially if Fultz never comes back. Marco Bellinelli and Joe Johnson are some potential buyout candidates that we could use our final roster spot on.
I don’t think either of them is going to swing the outcome of a playoff game for the Philadelphia 76ers, but that’s what people said about Joe Johnson last year, and look what happened in the Jazz’s first round series against the Clippers. Depth matters, and you never know what will happen, is all I’m saying.
Either way though, there’s no one who we can get that will come even close to how good Markelle Fultz was supposed to be, and that’s crappy. (If anyone suggests Derrick Rose… I might just break my own kneecaps out of sadness.)
The basketball gods may have taken one third of our young Big Three, for this year at least. Perhaps they were offended by The Process. What’s next now from our cruel basketball overlords? Will they cause one of our players to randomly disappear?
Perhaps even worse, will they snub a Philadelphia 76ers player from the All-Star game, and then when given three chances to correct their mistake, still refuse to do so? Will they even make two of the other three replacement players point guards to further rub it in?
Next: Why was Simmons snubbed from the All-Star game?
Oh. Right.