Negrodamus wrote: I actually think Fultz's passing is elite and his scoring is pretty good. Watching some of his games last night, he was whipping perfect passes to his teammates and they constantly blew the opportunity. The fact that he scored with such high percentages is very promising because he took so many contested shots which might be a result of the team falling behind so much due to their inadequacies. The problem with Washington was certainly not him last year. Very similar to Simmons on LSU. While I'm definitely troubled by his indifference on defense, I do think he, and Simmons, are going to make Embiid a 25+ ppg scorer. Fultz looked like a magician on PnRs.
My pt about his %s and playing on a bad team is not the dumb cliche that he can't be great because his team lost a lot; rather it's that, if you watch the games, he took long stretches off as his team got piled on and then randomly decided it was go time, which meant that he wasn't taking those shots while carrying the burden a 1st option does, and he also often wasn't taking those shots in competitive games (with correspondingly competitive defenses).
My more general reservation about him--which I've said in like 10 posts here over the past 6 months--is that many/most of his plays and moves don't look like NBA stuff. It's not like Simmons where you look at some highlights and say, 'that'll need to look a little different in the NBA but that move will slice through NBA defenses all day long'; watching Fultz I say to myself, 'that drive won't work, a good defender will smother that move, he'll need to do something a lot more clever in the lane than that one,' etc. Sometimes he does a little jab stop step-back or side-step shot that looks like it's NBA speed, and sometimes he has a nice euro-step in transition that seems NBA-ish, but most of his plays just seem like they're not quick enough and don't have enough shake to work at the next level. (That goes for most drives as well as some pull-ups.) He definitely has some tools that could allow him to be better at the next level, but I'm very skeptical of the assumption that he'll be able to speed up his game without any problems (instantly take on Dwyane Wade's speed and dynamic-ness because he has some of the basic tools that Wade had at his age.) I just think we're looking at a solid prospect rather than a great one, and someone who's going to need to play up to his very best skill potential to be an excellent player.
(Also, re: passing: If you watch highlights you come away with the impression that he can
really pass, but if you watch games you notice him more as a score-first PG who gives the ball up a lot and chills. Sort of like D Russell as a passing prospect (though I don't think they're comparable)--remember when everyone saw those couple of sweet bounce passes that DLo did at OSU and thought he was some sort of rare passing savant? Turns out that, just like in college, he's still got tunnel vision when he's driving and can't use his vision unless he's at a standstill. Fultz isn't exactly the same and he does make nice reads a lot, it's just that he really doesn't look like your typical playmaking PG overall, and I would expect something more like solid combo guard passing from him.)
