JN61 wrote:He was never that good. He was a bit of chubster in college, not that fast, not very good vision and so on. However it's absolutely true that issue he had affected his shot. But still fact remains he was not worth of first pick, even without stuff he had he would have been ultimately a first pick bust. Looking back he probably had talent to be in top 10 but definitely not first pick worthy. I don't even get why he was picked over other guys, I guess league was hell bent to find new Stephen Curry so they saw a guy who could shoot a bit in college (most can with poor defenses of kids playing) and a bit better athlete. Fultz ultimately put up numbers on a bad team.
To me it was always clear guy like Tatum was far better prospect. Big, pretty good shooter and with ball handling ability (just a bit slow for his size). Just what you want from today's wing.
I've been one of realgm's resident Fultz skeptics since he was at UW, and this is sounding kind of like nothing but a superficial hindsight hot take. Fultz was indeed very overrated by the usual draft hype machine, and there were lots of things that were sort of shaky about his profile that people were sweeping under the rug to anoint him a new super-prospect.
But everything you wrote sounds like half-baked nothingness. He wasn't a 'chubster' at all and he always had very very good speed--that's just facts--and what I think you're getting at is just that he wasn't particularly quick and couldn't burn guys off the bounce all day. Which, cool, no one said he was at draft time, he was always seen as a pn'r player rather than an iso guy. Also the idea that he was liked because he could 'shoot a bit in college' shows how little you understand of who Fultz was as a prospect--he was very long and had a great handle and finishing ability, he was absolutely deadly in college at pull-ups and creating his own shot on volume, he had massive pn'r potential as a shooter, driver, and playmaker. People liked Markelle Fultz as a 3-level lead creator with a great body and skillset, those are all totally distinct things from being a flamethrower college shooter. Problem is that he completely and utterly lost the one skill that allowed all that to make sense--a 3-level scorer suddenly become a one-level scorer, and he was never a good enough pure PG prospect to make his living that way. So once the shot left him, we never got to see who he was as a prospect at all.
Also I was a proponent of Tatum being in the mix for #1 but it was absolutely not clear that Tatum was a 'far better prospect.' In the simplest possible terms, since coming into the NBA Tatum has become one of the better and most impressive shooters in the entire NBA, after being a pretty mediocre shooter in college (numbers-wise that is). Fultz went from being one of the better shooters in college to being a complete and utter liability as a shooter. There was absolutely zero way of knowing that would happen for either player; a Tatum who's only a decent shooter isn't a particularly good shooter, while a Fultz who could drill pull-ups from anywhere and shoot 40%+ from 3 (both of which he did all day in college) is a very promising NBA prospect. Looking back now and saying 'see that's why you always take the big wing who can shoot and handle' is one of those eye-roll casual draft watcher comments that's as empty as your drunk uncle saying 'see Brady shows why you always go with a white player, they got better character and that's what matters once you get to the biggest stages.'
