NFL
By: Joe Cardoso
The DMV (Maryland, Virginia, DC) is a hotbed for great basketball talent the list of names is amazing and can go head to head with any state/city in America. In Maryland, one of many powerhouse high schools is DeMatha Catholic High School and that is where I first heard of and saw Markelle Fultz. His senior year of high school was a movie and ended with him being a 5-star recruit in the 2016 class. His one season at the University of Washington was solid and he made the most of it when the NBA draft came he was the number one pick by the 76ers. What happened after that was a nightmare for all parties involved, and was nothing close to what was expected. A shoulder injury that forced him to relearn how to shoot along with a wrist injury.
Injuries and battling physical and mental scars Sixers fans and ownership didn’t have the patience for him to work through it and they dealt him to the Orlando Magic. A perfect place to heal in all aspects and a franchise that isn’t the lead on SportsCenter nightly which equals no pressure. But, that had a huge bump in the road when he tore his ACL and ended his 2020-21 season. What has happened is he fine-tuned his game to fit today’s NBA and also got healthy. It has all come to a head this season with him hitting career highs in all the areas we hoop heads care about. You can tell when he hits the floor Markelle is having fun and letting things come to him as they do while being a major spark for a young up and Orlando Magic squad.
Attacking the rim like it stole his AirPods and creating for others he pushes the pace for the team and finds his spots to hit mid-range jumpers at a high clip. His three-point shooting is still a work in progress and he is showing flashes of having the ability to be a force on the defensive side an automatic way to gain more playing time for any team. The playoffs are not happening for his team this year but I would say the comeback Player of the Year award nominee needs to be on deck. What will the Magic do next? Do they trust what they have seen this year and give him a contract extension or wait and see with one more season? He is in the mists of his 3-year $50 million dollar extension and Orlando has a collection of young guards they need to figure out this summer.
Meanwhile, the other member of that short-lived “Big 3” Ben Simmons has been the butt of jokes and memes and can’t seem to get right. What if the Sixers had shown some patience and allowed him to heal and find his footing what might have that looked like along with Joel Embiid? We will never know yet another example of what can happen if you have a little bit of faith and patience with a young player coming into a pro league. But, in an era of ring chasing, what have you done for me lately, and 30-second highlights it’s hard to find. Besides being a local player I love a good comeback story and Markelle Fultz is one of the better ones lately. The Magic and Markelle Fultz walk away the winners and perhaps show that the old ways of team building are not 100% done and over with.
