Image via Getty/Michael Reaves
Over the past year, the Sixers have been at the center of one of the most bizarre sports stories in recent memory. No, we don’t mean the one about their former GM getting fired for putting his own players on blast from a burner Twitter account. And we’re not talking about Zhaire Smith missing his rookie season this year because he had an allergic reaction after eating a sesame seed. Of course, we’re referring to the curious case of Markelle Fultz’s missing jumper, the story of how the No. 1 overall pick in last year’s draft struggled to shoot a basketball in the time between being drafted and stepping onto the floor for his first NBA game.
The situation took a new turn this week, when it was announced that after meeting approximately 10 specialists Fultz had been diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome, which is a *consults WebMD* group of disorders around the collarbone that can cause pain and numbness in the shoulders, neck, and fingers. He’ll miss at least the next 3 to 6 weeks while rehabbing in Los Angeles.
So how did we get here? I think we better start from the beginning.
When the Sixers opened training camp in late-September of 2017, Fultz was the team’s big story. Fans were chomping at the bit to get their first taste of their new big three of Fultz, Joel Embiid, and Ben Simmons. But when the media was welcomed into the gym to watch the first full-team scrimmage, that hope quickly turned to confusion.
Gone was the smooth and deadly shot that Fultz had put on display as a freshman at Washington, and in its place was this:
Interesting how dramatically different Markelle Fultz's FT stroke looks here compared to @ UW (65%). Has lowered release point considerably. pic.twitter.com/6REIFX0qtR
— Mike Schmitz (@Mike_Schmitz) September 28, 2017
“He Literally Cannot Raise His Arms To Shoot”
A month of shifting narratives and bricked free throws later, Fultz’s camp acknowledged for the first time the existence of a physical explanation of his struggles. In a statement to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Fultz’s agent, Raymond Brothers, said that the rookie had undergone a procedure to remove fluid from his shoulder and that his client “literally cannot raise up his arms to shoot the basketball.” This put Sixers fans into a state of panic, but hours later Brothers followed that up with a new statement, claiming that he had meant to say that Fultz had fluid added to his shoulder via a cortisone injection, a more routine measure.
Fultz would not play another game in 2017 after this statement was made, and five days later he was officially shut down indefinitely due to shoulder soreness and scapular muscle imbalance. He had appeared in four games and shot 33.3 percent from the field and 50.0 percent from the line, having attempted zero threes after taking more than five per game in college.
Six weeks after shelving Fultz so he could focus solely on rehabbing his injured shoulder, the Sixers released a statement explaining that the soreness had cleared and muscular imbalance had been resolved. The press release added that his readiness to play would be re-evaluated in approximately three weeks, which of course is a totally normal thing to do when a No. 1 overall pick is given a clean bill of health.
Fultz (Sans Jumper) Returns To the Floor
In the 15 weeks that followed the Sixers’ Dec. 9 announcement that Fultz’s shoulder was no longer an issue, the team released just one statement. That came on Jan. 2 and consisted of just two sentences that basically repeated the information already provided a month prior. But when he finally stepped back on the floor in late-March, it was clear that the issues that had plagued him five months prior were still present. In 10 games down the stretch of the regular season, he shot 42.9 percent from the field, 44.4 percent from the free-throw line, and attempted just one three—a heave at the end of a quarter that he missed. Midway through the Sixers’ first-round playoff series against the Miami Heat, he’d fallen out of the rotation entirely.
After a disappointing rookie season, Fultz turned to renowned NBA trainer and shot guru Drew Hanlen for help. Sixers fans were thrilled, having seen firsthand the improvements Joel Embiid had made after working with Hanlen. Over the next few months, Fultz rebuilt his jumper from the ground up and took an estimated 150,000 jump shots under Hanlen’s watchful eye. He even skipped Summer League so as not to disrupt his training regimen.
All summer long, Sixers fans impatiently waited for video of Fultz’s new jumper to be released. Instead, they had to settle for cropped photos and highlight reels cut by Hanlen’s team that had more lens flares and fast cuts than Michael Bay’s Transformers movies. Finally on Sept. 20, The Players’ Tribune released the tapes in all their glory. It was beautiful with Fultz casually launching shot after shot from deep range, catching the back of the net each time with a one-motion form reminiscent of that of Steph Curry.
This was a big deal for Sixers fans.
Fultz’s return to relative normalcy would end up being short-lived, as the significant hitch that had plagued his jumpers the year prior slowly crept back and he began to abandon the outside shot entirely. To make matters worse, Hanlen stated in a tweet that was later deleted that his young protégé was still dealing with the shoulder trouble that dogged him the year prior, something the Sixers and Fultz’s camp quickly denied. But by the second week of November things were worse than ever…
After struggling for much of the month of November, Fultz was benched in the second half of a game against the Phoenix Suns in favor of TJ McConnell. His seven minutes on the floor were the fewest he’d seen in his 33-game NBA career. The next day, Brothers, operating not only as Fultz’s agent but also as his lawyer, informed the Sixers that his client would immediately suspend participation in games and practices while he sought out the opinion of shoulder specialist.
In the days that followed, reports suggested that Fultz and his camp prefered if he were traded, although this was quickly denied by Brothers.
So What Exactly Comes Next?
With a new diagnosis and yet another ambiguous return-to-play timeline in place, the saga continues to march on without an obvious end in sight. Fortunately for the Sixers, who sit at 17-9 and now have Jimmy Butler to shoulder much of the shot-creating load the team had hoped Fultz might carry, they can be patient with the player they traded two first-round picks to acquire less than two years ago. Still, the Sixers have shown incredible patience throughout, but every organization has its limits. For the Sixers' sake, for Fultz's sake, a new beginning for both might the best outcome for a puzzling situation that appears to have no end in sight.