Dr Positivity wrote:His season actually wasn’t that amazing. Of the DX top 10 Fultz is only 8th in WS/48 and 6th in BPM, behind Jackson and Ball in both. Before considering impact concerns considering his team’s record.
So he was 6th in BPM and a minimum of seven months younger than any top 10 player with a higher BPM. Yeah, that actually does qualify as pretty amazing considering how many other players in the class are thought of as potential franchise cornerstones. Besides the obvious points about what each player was asked to do and the quality of his teammates, Fultz is 15 months younger than Jackson. If we wanted a more valid statistical comparison between Fultz and Jackson, Fultz would have needed to come back for his sophomore season in order to let us see what each player could do against NCAA competition at age 19. It doesn't take much imagination to project that Fultz with another year of experience and physical development would have been ridiculously overwhelming against college players and would have blown Jackson's numbers out of the water.
Not as good a 3pt shooting prospect as advertised. Lots of reason to think that when predicting 3pt one should look at 3pt volume and FT% in addition to NCAA 3P%. Since Fultz is 64% FT this makes him more of an average 3pt shooting prospects (projected at 34-35% on a site I recently read). Ingram last year was an example of a “great shooting prospect” who’s 60s FT% showed holes in that statement. If Fultz doesn’t shoot 3s well it also makes the IT issue bigger.
James Harden shot 34.7% on threes this season. Like Harden, Fultz is talented enough all-around that his becoming an excellent offensive player isn't entirely dependent on becoming as good a three-point shooter as Curry or Lillard. Ingram was in a similar boat: even after factoring in free-throw percentage, he could end up shooting a league-average percentage from 3 and still be an all-star if the other areas of his game developed as expected.
Analytics guys note that PPG is one of the worst stats to use to predict NBA success. Stats like steals, blocks, assists, rebounds, efficiency carry over better. So this is an issue for Fultz since points per game is the bread and butter of why he’s rated #1. He's pretty good in the other stats but not #1 level over Ball and Jackson
I honestly cannot recall anyone ever mentioning Fultz's points per game average by itself; if anything it was the combination of points, rebounds, assists, and three-point shooting. Fultz is a better prospect than Michael Beasley was considered to be, and Beasley had a much better freshman season from a scoring perspective. When it comes to other stats, Fultz's shot-blocking ability certainly stands out for a point guard, and he had a higher AST% and lower TO% than Ball despite playing with teammates who will never sniff the NBA.
Non elite athlete. “Yeah but it’ll be fine” was used to describe Evan Turner and D’Angelo Russell coming into the draft as well and it ended up being a huge concern. On the other hand players like Harden and Kyrie weren’t top level athletes either.
You can't discriminate between a good athlete and an average one? When people say "non elite athlete" they mean "not Wall, Westbrook, or healthy Derrick Rose" but after those players, there isn't a point guard who had Fultz's combination of size and athleticism at age 18. If you were ranking players by athleticism you would go through a lot of names after Fultz before getting to Russell or Turner. You could say someone like Eric Bledsoe is quicker and more explosive, but Fultz has 3 inches in height and wingspan on Bledsoe and will likely improve his athleticism as he continues to mature physically.
This is totally unfair, but could Fultz in worst case scenario be PG Jahlil Okafor? Remember how much scouts drooled on Okafor’s “advanced” offensive game for his age, his footwork, isolation skillset? Just because you look the part in terms of moves doesn’t mean it always comes together.
No because scouts drool over Fultz's advanced pick-and-roll game, which unlike an isolation post-up is a type of play that actually works in the NBA.
