Exploring what a successful season from Markelle Fultz would look like in 2019-20, and if the Orlando Magic can expect one?
Over the last two seasons, there hasn’t been a more confusing storyline in the NBA than the one surrounding Marelle Fultz and the Philadelphia 76ers. However, the first chapter of his NBA career came to a disappointing conclusion when the Sixers elected to trade him to the Orlando Magic at the 2019 NBA Trade Deadline.
Despite a less-than-ideal start to his NBA career, a fresh start with Orlando might be exactly what Fultz needed. As he enters his third season in the NBA, they’ll be literally no expectations on the former No. 1 overall pick.
Fultz last played in an NBA game on November 19, 2018. He missed most of this first two seasons with the Sixers due to an injury and, interestingly, the Magic haven’t publically given a real timeline on when they expect Fultz to make his debut for the team.
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Though, the team has been hyping up Fultz throughout the summer. Plus, a couple of days ago the Magic made it official in picking up Fultz’s 2020-21 option, guaranteeing him $12-plus million for that season.
That should be another sign that the Magic are expecting a big come back as he continues to rehab from injury.
One of the Magic’s biggest questions heading into the 2019-20 season, however, is what should the team expect from Fultz? In other words, how do we judge Fultz and what would be considered a successful season for the third-year guard?
On the surface, that could be a difficult thing to answer. For one, we don’t even know if he’s healthy. However, for the sake of this article and Fultz’s future, I’d hope the Magic wouldn’t just throw in him on the court just for the sake of it this season.
Which means, if he does, in fact, see the floor at any point this season, it’s under the assumption that he’s fit to play. We have to give the Magic that much.
As far as expectations go, before we move forward we have to look back at the player that he’s been in the short time he’s actually been on the floor during his first two years.
Fultz has appeared in 33 games through the first two seasons of his career, starting 15 of them last season. Over that span, he’s averaged 7.7 points, 3.4 rebounds and 3.1 assists on 41 percent shooting from the field in roughly 20 minutes per contest.
Again, this is an extremely small sample size. More context that should be added is where Fultz currently stands in reference to the rest of the Magic roster. Fultz is currently listed as the team’s third point guard behind DJ Augustin and Michael Carter-Williams, two players that have proven to be valuable rotation players but neither of which are players you want starting at the lead guard position for you.
The fact that the Magic didn’t draft a point guard or sign a starter in free agency suggests that the team expects Fultz to play a role at some point for the team this season. Using that context, I suppose we have to assume that the team believes Fultz will be healthy enough to play, probably sooner rather than later too.
The first step in Fultz having a successful season in 2019-20 is getting to a point in which his health is no longer a qualifier. If we ever get to a point this season where we don’t talk about Fultz’s health as a major talking point, it will be a successful season.
Through the majority of his short career in the NBA, we’ve always talked about Fultz’s health and not so much his skill-set on the floor as a professional. Fultz’s ability – or even inability- has always taken a backseat to his health. It would be huge if Fultz could change that narrative this season.
As far as on the court production, that’s where it gets difficult. However, if we exit the 2019-20 season with Fultz being an above-average starting point guard in the NBA, it would be a huge success.
I think it’s only fair to assume that even with a healthy Fultz, it’s going to take some time for him to come to fruition. It’s not like he’s going to take the league by storm and play like a former No. 1 pick this season, assuming health. While that would be a great thing, it wouldn’t be fair to expect that from Fultz.
Overall, a successful season from Fultz would be defined through health, unfortunately. The first thing that Fultz needs to prove is that he can stay healthy. After that, then he needs to prove he was worthy of being a top pick. But, right now, with the way the Orlando Magic are operating, you’d have to assume we should see the best Markelle Fultz that we’ve seen thus far in his career.