ORLANDO - Before injuring his left knee on Jan. 6 of last season, Markelle Fultz was playing some of his best basketball of his career. In the seven games he appeared in before getting hurt, he averaged a shade over 14 points and six assists.
Let’s take a deeper look into what he was doing well, and how those strengths will help this young Magic team going forward.
Few guards are craftier out of the pick-and-roll than Fultz, who uses every dribble combination in the book to shake defenders and get downhill for layups or pull up from the mid-range. Nearly half of the points he averaged last season came out of the pick-and-roll.
Fultz is more of a body-contact embracer than a body-contact evader. In other words, he seems to prefer leaning into defenders rather than try swerving out of the way. He’s so strong and balanced that he’s able to make shots, or at least initiate a foul call, even with some contact.
Within three feet of the hoop last season – granted it was only eight games – he shot 70.6 percent, nearly six percent higher than his career average from this distance.
The prior season (2019-20), the 6-foot-4 guard was one of the best mid-range shooters. From 15 to 19 feet out, he shot 48.9 percent on 94 attempts. Among players who took at least 90 shots from that range that season, that was the league’s 11th best percentage. In case you are curious, Milwaukee’s Khris Middleton ranked No. 1 at 56 percent.
Underrated about Fultz is his playmaking, especially out of one-five pick-and-rolls. Before his injury, Fultz and Nikola Vucevic were as good as any duo in the league generating offense together. Vucevic shot 50 percent from the field last season when Fultz delivered him a pass out of the pick-and-roll. Adding Fultz back into the mix should help both Wendell Carter Jr. and Mo Bamba, either when they roll inside or pop out for 3-point attempts.
Perhaps most important is Fultz’s decision-making. The Magic have struggled mightily this season protecting the ball. They are 25th in turnovers and 21st in opponent points off those turnovers. Fultz, who for his career is averaging just 1.8 turnovers per game, will significantly help reduce live-ball miscues.
Expect Fultz and Franz Wagner to have strong on-court chemistry. The reason for that is Fultz is extremely good at finding cutters, which Wagner excels at doing. Wagner, relentless moving around when the ball isn’t in his hands, is shooting nearly 77 percent when he cuts to the basket.
The key for Fultz – and this has been at the center of his development since arriving in Orlando in 2019 – is becoming a more proficient outside shooter. Again, it was just eight games, but last season he only shot 25 percent from 3-point range on 16 attempts. If he can at least become a respectable 3-point shooter, this will open his game up even more because defenders will be less inclined to sag off him and dare him to shoot.
The good news is that he’s not afraid to shoot it from deep when left wide open. All his 3-point attempts taken last season before the injury came when there wasn’t a defender within at least four feet of him and 12 of them were taken when there wasn’t a defender within at least six feet of him.
Defensively, the 23-year-old has excellent instincts and timing. In the 2019-20 season, he led the Magic in total deflections with 156 of them and in total defensive loose balls recovered with 36 of them.