A healthy version of the Philadelphia 76ers’ most recent No. 1 pick drastically improves their offense.
The Philadelphia 76ers will enter the 2018-19 season among the favorites in the Eastern Conference. With LeBron James going west, the competitive window is very much open for Brett Brown’s squad. Perhaps nobody opens it more than Markelle Fultz.
We already know what the Sixers have in Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons — two transcendent talents who will keep them in contention for years to come. Both are bound to improve, with Embiid training under Drew Hanlen’s guidance and Simmons working on diversifying his scoring profile.
Their ceiling, however, is capped without at least one major addition. They will have plenty of cap space next summer, but that addition doesn’t have to come through free agency. It could be someone who is already on the roster: Fultz.
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Nobody really knows what happened with Fultz last season. Drew Hanlen called it the yips, but scapular muscle imbalance is a real thing — and likely something Fultz, at one point or another, dealt with.
We’ve never seen the No. 1 overall pick forget how to shoot. We’ve seen players get drafted and learn how to shoot, but never somebody who shoots 40+ percent from deep in college and loses control of his mechanics in one summer.
The lack of historical precedent for Fultz’s situation makes predicting his 2018-19 production a difficult task. Every report indicates positive improvement, but as Hanlen noted, some of Fultz’s issues were mental. How he performs in open-gym training sessions is independent of what he does against professional defenders on national television.
With all of that said, I’m a firm believer in Fultz’s talent — something he showed plenty of in 14 regular season games. He’s already one of the best young passers in the league, diagnosing defensive breakdowns and whipping on-time, on-target passes with regularity.
If he’s able to restore his jumper to its previous state, Fultz instantly becomes one of the Sixers’ most dynamic weapons. He also opens up offensive opportunities that Brett Brown didn’t previously have, providing an elite pick-and-roll presence in the halfcourt.
At Washington, Fultz was one of the most effective offensive players in college basketball. That was largely due to his ability to shred defenses in the pick-and-roll, combining excellent poise and pace with the ability to score proficiently at all three levels.
With his crafty handles, Fultz can bend defenses and open up passing lanes in ways some of the league’s best point guards can’t match. He’s also an elite finisher, displaying incredible finesse when scoring around the basket.
Simply put, Fultz solves one of the Sixers’ biggest issues: a lack of self-creation in the halfcourt. He also opens up Ben Simmons’ game, unlocking new ways of using one of the most versatile playmakers in the NBA.
Per Synergy (per The Ringer), the Sixers used the pick-and-roll less than any team in the NBA last season. That’s because, outside of Simmons, T.J. McConnell (and briefly Fultz), there wasn’t a single reliable ball-handler who posed a consistent shooting threat off the bounce.
The Sixers were forced to engineer other ways to score, creatively using off-ball movement to open up driving lanes for Simmons and generate post-up opportunities for Embiid. That all came crashing down against Boston, who ran the Sixers’ shooters off the line and marginalized Simmons’ strengths by exploiting his weaknesses.
In their current state, the Sixers are still playoff contenders who likely learned some valuable lessons in their postseason defeat. Adding Fultz, however, would open up a new wrinkle that could propel the Sixers’ to juggernaut status on the offensive end.
A healthy Fultz would give the Sixers a reliable source of dribble penetration, negating many of the Celtics’ defensive tactics from last postseason. He would also give them a three-level scorer who can get buckets in isolation, helping them create offense when ball movement stagnates.
A fully functional Fultz would also allow Simmons to work off the ball, cutting to the rim and working as the roll man in pick-and-rolls. A high-level athlete with impressive finishing ability, Simmons has the makings of an elite off-ball player at 6-foot-10.
That’s something the Sixers would be wise to tap into if at all possible. Fultz gives them an easy avenue toward doing so.
Given his passing chops and advanced feel for the game, Fultz has legitimate All-Star potential. Heck, he might still be the best talent from the 2018 draft class. We’re still a long way from figuring that out — and things could also go south rather quickly — but Fultz presents a tantalizing opportunity for the Sixers to upgrade their offensive system.
If that happens, the Sixers become very real threats to the Celtics and Raptors, if they weren’t already.