How the 76ers can stop digging a deeper hole with the Markelle Fultz injury situation

No one knows what’s really going on with Markelle Fultz. The No. 1 pick in the 2017 NBA Draft played four games before getting shut down due to some combination of a shoulder injury and a shooting hitch.

The intervening three months have gotten us no closer to a believable explanation. Every few weeks, a Zapruderian video clip of Fultz shooting with an unrecognizable stroke pops up. Every few weeks, Sixers’ management says something weird about Fultz. Nobody — not the player, not the organization, not those close to the player — has a clear story, as this in-depth report by Kyle Neubeck of Philly Voice reveals.

Meanwhile, the 76ers are in position to make the playoffs for the first time since before The Process began. Philadelphia is fighting with the Detroit Pistons for the No. 8 seed and actually has a solid shot of landing in the No. 7 spot. Ben Simmons, nominally the team’s point guard (which is nominally Fultz’s natural position), is a top candidate for Rookie of the Year and is complaining about not being named an all-star replacement. This is to say that Simmons has been excellent, helping the Sixers win games even without anything from this year’s No. 1 pick.

But the Sixers are doing Fultz no favors by letting his weird season linger. Here are three things the team should do immediately to fix this.

As noted above, the Sixers have been fine without getting anything from Fultz. There’s no actual pressure for the team to get Fultz back on the court ASAP. In fact, the team is on the verge of adding Marco Belinelli from the buyout market. Philadelphia has plenty of guards right now. Fultz would be superfluous to a point.

So why not shut him down?

Ruling him out for the rest of the season would reset expectations for when he, the Sixers’ medical team, and Fultz’s camp of trainers and managers need to figure out what happened. Instead of pressing to get things fixed right now, Fultz would have a reasonable timeline of either Vegas Summer League in July or training camp in September. Defining that timeline could help any mental blocks Fultz may be experiencing.

(To be clear, we don’t know if this is purely a mechanical issue or a mental issue relating to confidence. All systems, cosmic and bodily, are interrelated, though.)

Philadelphia has plenty of experience shutting down high-profile rookies. Usually it happens before they’ve played a game, but Fultz’s situation was a little different. The upside of waiting until next year for Fultz is a better option at this point than to continue to press for him to come back down the home stretch of the season. There are only 30 games left anyway.

You know what doesn’t help anyone but NBA Twitter comedians and Philadelphia heart doctors? Those videos of Fultz shooting that pop up randomly from local media.

Naturally, the Sixers faithful and basketball fans in general are deeply curious about Fultz’s situation and lap up any updates, especially video proof of what his stroke looks like these days. We are all hungry for these videos. But we need to be starved for a little while, for Fultz’s sake.

Fultz’s social media habits are unclear; we don’t know if he reads the mentions or if he gets updates on what people are saying about the hitch. We do know, as Neubeck reports, he wants to be in the public eye to show he won’t back down.

His re-emergence in front of the public is also partially a product of his own desire to be out there and carrying on like normal, according to sources who spoke with PhillyVoice. Just as Joel Embiid has some autonomy in whether he suits up for a game, Fultz holds a lot of power in how his situation is handled. He does not want to be known as the kid who backed down from the challenge, knowing he has already overcome plenty to get here at all. The Sixers have currently chosen to empower that, rather than letting a teenager become consumed by inner demons away from the spotlight.

Let’s hope the 76ers change their tone. It’s not helpful to him.

Remember what Philadelphia did with Embiid when his injury recovery was at a low point? They shipped him to Qatar. While some humorous details of his exile leaked out, video of him working out sure didn’t.

Qatar might not be appropriate for Fultz, but surely there is a city without an NBA team and with NBA-level training facilities where the 76ers could send him and a trainer or two to work out the remainder of the season and the summer. How about Seattle, where Fultz went to college? The coaching staff at University of Washington has turned over, but Brandon Roy is around the city. Watching Roy thrive as a high school coach and chatting with him about the impermanence of NBA life could be helpful.

Just get Fultz out of Philadelphia and away from those cell phone videos, please.

Can you believe the general manager of the 76ers said this last week?

This is a bit cherry-picked: Bryan Colangelo’s comments on Fultz were more extensive, noting the Sixers continue to believe a shoulder injury and muscular imbalance led to the issues and there is no timeline on Fultz’s return. And Colangelo does not appear to relish talking on this topic.

He should relish it even less. Colangelo needs to stop talking about Fultz completely.

Philadelphia can be as mad as it wants about the silent treatment: Sam Hinkie did the same thing for years, and his reputation survived. There’s no upside to answering unanswerable questions about Fultz — especially when the organization doesn’t even have the full story, as Neubeck’s story suggests. Shutting down media questions about Fultz goes hand in hand with shutting Fultz down for the season and shipping him to parts unknown. It’s all about helping Fultz get better, whatever that means.

Instead, it’s a circus whenever Colangelo talks, whenever Fultz works out in view of the media, whenever there’s a new nugget of information. That’s not healthy for Fultz or anyone.

The fandom — in Philly and beyond — will continue to talk about Fultz, wonder about Fultz, theorize about Fultz. But the Sixers can and should exclude themselves from this narrative.