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Markelle Fultz dealing with wrist ailment on top of shoulder woes, sources say he would prefer a move to new team
By Jared Weiss, Derek Bodner, and Sam Amick Nov 21, 2018 137
Double-pumps before taking a shot. Strange spasms when tying his shoes. Odd rituals before setting up for a free throw. Over the past few weeks, the saga of Philadelphia’s troubled Markelle Fultz has gone from strange to bizarre, stoking questions about what lies at the root of the 2017 No. 1 overall-pick’s continued struggles.
In addition to a previously diagnosed right shoulder injury that continues to impact him, Fultz has been playing with an apparent injury in his right wrist area that has adversely affected his ability to shoot, league sources told The Athletic. The issue has led to periodic difficulties holding on to the ball during his shot. Specialists have been working with Fultz to figure out how they can strengthen the wrist area to remedy the injury.
Sources with knowledge of Fultz’s thinking have also told The Athletic that the player would prefer a fresh start with a new team.
The wrist and shoulder injuries’ impact varies; some days they badly hinder him, other days they do not, causing an erratic pattern in which his shot appears to be working one game and is off the next. As he tries to work through and compensate for the injury, it has at times resulted in a case of the ‘yips,’ especially when shooting free throws.
Fultz and his agent, Raymond Brothers, have unilaterally scheduled him to see a specialist in New York Monday and until then he will be held out of team practices and games, as reported by The Athletic’s David Aldridge. Fultz will have his shoulder and wrist examined at this appointment in an attempt to obtain a clearer diagnosis. Fultz still experiences physical stress when moving the ball from his chest up to the set point in his shot, contributing to the erraticism per sources.
Sources say the Philadelphia 76ers have not been aware of any ailment preventing Fultz from being medically cleared or in harm’s way on the basketball court.
The shoulder injury was initially diagnosed as an imbalanced scapula last season, and as part of Fultz’s recovery, the second-year guard needed to relearn how to shoot the ball. Fultz, 20, has been wearing a specialized undershirt while he plays to address the scapula issue, according to sources. The genesis of the physical issues Fultz has been suffering from date back to his pre-draft training, as he attempted to increase his three-point range. According to sources close to Fultz, it is not clear exactly when the wrist injury started, or whether the wrist injury is connected to the scapular imbalance.
Fultz missed the end of his lone season at the University of Washington in February 2017 with right knee soreness. According to league and player sources, Fultz had a procedure on his right knee soon after he finished playing to scope out the back of his knee. Fultz was initially expecting to have meniscus surgery, but opted for the scope procedure after receiving a second opinion.
Over the next few months, Fultz recovered from the procedure and began working to enhance his jump shot with his longtime trainer Keith Williams. Williams, who previously worked with Kevin Durant and DeMarcus Cousins, has been working with Fultz since his childhood and is longtime friends with Fultz’s mother Ebony.
Fultz was an effective shooter from the college 3-point line, but needed to increase his shooting power to handle moving back to the NBA 3-point line. The key adjustment Fultz made was to move the set point of his shot from the standard spot just above his forehead to well out in front of it, an increasingly common approach in the NBA to enhance the energy transfer of the shot. However, when Fultz had his initial draft workout with the Boston Celtics, he struggled.
He looked physically off and his set point was noticeably different than it had been in college. The team expected that the shot could be reworked by the player development staff, but were concerned that something was not right with Fultz at the time.
The workout and physical played a role in the Celtics electing to trade the first pick in the 2017 draft to the 76ers, eventually drafting Jayson Tatum with the third pick a few weeks later. After Fultz held his initial workout with the 76ers, he told reporters, “My knee is great. As you can see, I’m jumping pretty high and everything like that. It was just a situation where I had some stuff going on with my knee.”
Fultz was drafted by Philadelphia in June of 2017 and went on to shoot fairly well at Summer League with his revamped form, although his Summer League was cut short by a mild ankle injury. Fultz and Williams continued to make adjustments to his shot, however, and by the time he arrived at training camp in late September, his set point was significantly lower and he could barely get a shot off. Coach Brett Brown said on September 28 that Fultz had altered his shot with his personal trainer after Summer League ended and that the team was trying to recalibrate it. Fultz and Williams had been working on his shot, but the coaching staff was not involved in the process.
Fultz did not mention that he was suffering from shoulder soreness to the team until training camp began, and he proved unwilling to take shots from the perimeter. After observing Fultz passing up chances to take outside shots during a pre-camp informal scrimmage, 76ers staff pulled him aside and asked him to shoot from three-point range. He airballed multiple shots.
In October, Fultz was diagnosed with a sore shoulder and began receiving treatment for it. Public comments from Brown and then-GM Bryan Colangelo said that Fultz’s attempts to straighten his shot pathway and move the set point out further and higher away from his forehead were causing this soreness.
By the time the season started, Fultz’s shoulder was stiff to the point that he had significantly restricted upper arm movement in his shot. He would only take midrange shots on the move and his follow-through was almost entirely in the wrist, rather than the entire arm.
On November 19, 2017, the team announced that Fultz had been evaluated for a scapular muscle imbalance and would be re-evaluated in two-to-three weeks. Fultz received a cortisone shot in the shoulder and continued to conduct physiotherapy work to improve his shoulder. Around the same time, Fultz began talking with trainer Drew Hanlen to set up a training partnership to revamp his shot again. But in January 2018, Fultz was again working with Williams, unbeknownst to the team.
After the season was over, Fultz went to Los Angeles to work with Hanlen alongside his friend Joel Embiid, with the objective of rebuilding his entire shot from scratch.
They started with relearning how to grip the ball, which was an issue because Fultz was experiencing sensation issues in his right thumb due to the injury. After a few weeks, they began reworking the set point in his shot to be closer to his forehead and have a more natural movement. Initially, Fultz was struggling to grip the ball while on the move and would airball pull-up mid-range jumpers in between makes. Fultz had a significant hitch in his shot when on the move, but it was smoother on free throws. Over the course of the summer, Fultz became more comfortable and consistent with his new shot, to the point that he was publicly confident that his shot was back entering training camp.
“There was a lot of things going on about changing shots, and all this and the third. But there was an injury there,” Fultz told Denver Nuggets guard Isaiah Thomas in a September Players’ Tribune interview. “For me, I’m a hooper, so I was like ‘Man this ain’t gonna stop me.’ So once I realized really I couldn’t do stuff to my full capacity I was like ‘It really is something.’ So I had to find out what it was, and we did that throughout the season. It took a long time and people couldn’t really understand it, thinking I was just being soft. But it was really an injury. Now I’ve gotten a chance to pick apart all of these doctors. We’ve figured it out. And I’ve been back to work this summer. Everything’s back to and even better than what it was.”
In the first two games of the preseason, the new mechanics were apparent and appeared to be yielding improvements, despite a slight hitch still present at the top of the shot. Then he went to China for an exhibition series put on by the NBA, and the consistency of his mechanics began to wane. When he got back for the regular season, the trend shifted in the other direction. He hit one pull-up against the Celtics in the season opener, then shot 1-for-6 in the first half of the home opener against the Chicago Bulls. Just about everyone from Fultz’s camp was in attendance, including his mother Ebony and trainer Hanlen.
At halftime, multiple witnesses observed Ebony yelling at Hanlen. According to sources with knowledge of the argument, she was angry that results were not showing for Markelle and Hanlen walked away. Hanlen did not work with Fultz again after that fight and officially parted ways.
When reached for comment, Hanlen told The Athletic, “Legally I am not allowed to address the situation or talk about anything regarding my time with Markelle.”
By October 29, Fultz had reverted back to the form similar to the one he displayed at 2017 training camp, with a set point down in front of his face. He hit one wide-open three with this form in a 1-for-5 shooting night, then missed a pair of 3-pointers wide off the rim early in the first few possessions of the game the next night in Toronto. He has not attempted another three in nine games since.
After a rough shooting night against the Brooklyn Nets on November 4, Hanlen responded to a tweet by saying that Fultz is not fully healthy, which he later deleted. This prompted questions to Brown and Fultz about whether this was true.
“Nobody’s ever 100 percent healthy,” Brown said. “To the best of my knowledge, he’s healthy enough to go do what he’s been doing. He’s been playing basketball and doing well. He’s fine. There’s no conspiracy theory out there. Nobody’s 100 percent healthy. But he’s healthy to play basketball like JJ (Redick) is and Joel (Embiid) is.”
Fultz echoed the exact same “nobody’s ever 100 percent healthy” mantra, saying bumps and bruises are just life in the NBA and he’s working every day to get better. But over the past few weeks, Fultz has displayed some odd tendencies during dead-ball moments in the game. First, it was a whole-body spasm after tying his shoes. Then he double-pumped a free throw, something he explained away as the ball slipping out of his hands.
Then there was a shuffling of the ball on the way up on a free throw against Utah Friday night, which was, according to a source familiar with the matter, an attempt to block out the yips. A source said that concern about his injury causes him to double clutch, or hesitate, fearful the ball may slip. At this point, the source said, it is as much a mental hurdle as it is a physical one.
Fultz is still demonstrating he has special potential as an attacking point guard and defender, but has been suffering intense criticism for his erratic shooting and abnormal actions at the free throw line and elsewhere. With no clear remedy for his issues at this point, and his team displaying the hallmarks of a title contender, Fultz may be caught in a situation where his potential makes him too valuable to replace, but his struggles make it hard for him to be a vital cog in a championship run.
— Shams Charania and David Aldridge also contributed to this report.