The Orlando Magic is, at best, the third worst team in the NBA this season. That’s why you probably didn’t watch their home game on Monday night against the Indiana Pacers. You didn’t miss much: For 32 of the 48 minutes of the game, it was a throw-away race between two bad Eastern Conference teams that didn’t go anywhere in particular. But in the remaining 16 minutes, this otherwise unforgettable game marks the triumphant return to action of Markel Fultz. Do you remember Fultz? Yes! This person!
Perhaps this will break your respect for this website and its hard-working staff when I tell you that not too long ago too many of us spent too much time debating in Slack whether Fultz belongs to Mount Rushmore in the NBA Draft. In the end, there was widespread agreement among the innocent participants in this discussion that the best choice to play a total of 33 games in two seasons for the team that drafted it was in fact a huge historic setback, even if he resurrected his career elsewhere. And this resurrection is still far from complete. Fultz really showed glimpses of how he could succeed on the NBA floor during his third season as a professional, but on his second NBA team, and it’s worth taking a step back anyway and appreciating how sad it was so far: Fultz, once hailed as a prospect by almost a generation not to be missed, operated a constant rotation of the insanely cursed Orlando Magic, and this was considered happy development.
And that was before Fultz suffered an ACL rupture two weeks after the 2020-21 season, ending the longest consecutive game of his career in the NBA, with a staggering 49. Between a broken shoulder and the ensuing absolute loss due to confidence in his jump, which struck him in Philadelphia, and a knee injury that now deprives him of most of the last two campaigns, Fultz was limited to just 114 NBA games in most of his five seasons as a professional. It’s kind of shocking to look back and realize that Fultz has never really been closer to a career as a NBA frontman than a few days before he was selected to enter the league. Nowadays, he is receiving a standing ovation for simply moving to the NBA on his own.
After all, this will be a happy blog. Fultz played eight minutes in each half on Monday night and looked very much like a solid NBA player. The confusion and horror of the unprecedented brainstorm that destroyed Fultz’s jumper tends to redirect the study of his skill set far from what he has always been best at, which is to dribble to anywhere on the floor with ease, with which few players in the sport can match. Fortunately, this ability seems to have more or less survived the ACL injury. Fultz made some great moves on Monday night and gave a very encouraging 10 points and six assists in his limited series:
Extremely cool back position in traffic was eye-popping, but for me the best game here came at the end of the third quarter, with Magic up 13 points and I felt good. Fultz grabbed a pass on the wing and immediately headed to the right. When Dwayne Washington cut his way to the bowl, Fultz turned left and took a slippery step back and squeezed out a beautiful fading jumper. Fultz will probably have to show at least a desire to try threes – he took zero on Monday night – to achieve something close to his potential before the draft, but in the meantime he can partially compensate for this deficit by doing smart little things like catching the ball in move, jump past fake fakes and reliably reach your comfortable places. Either way, it’s a lot cooler to watch than a clumsy and indecisive set of shots released in the name of distance.
Magic head coach Jamal Mosley says Fultz will be limited to 16 to 20 minutes a night for now, but that there will be room to maneuver depending on how Fultz feels on the floor. So far, he is no better than the third guard of the Orlando Magic, sitting behind two younger players taken by the Magic in the time since they exchanged for Fultz in 2019. Even if Fultz becomes good and endures it, he will still he still has to make his way to a bigger role, and his path to a position of professional stability is probably far from over. For now, it’s nice to see him on the NBA floor, playing basketball, with completely nullified professional expectations and whole heads removed from the time his jumper shape was the difference between an excuse or a disaster for a controversial multi-year overhaul. Fultz is now just a rotating player with a reasonable contract, who makes great moves and tries to move the needle with a few tickets for his team. After all he has been through, this is really enough to make a person stand up and cheer up.