Washington PG Markelle Fultz is a draft prospect worth losing for

TUCSON, Ariz. — Washington freshman point guard Markelle Fultz is a draft prospect who could make many teams set at point guard seriously consider drafting another — that’s if they wind up landing the No. 1 overall pick.

With the second-worst record in the NBA, that could very well be the Phoenix Suns in the 2017 NBA Draft.

When watching Fultz, there isn’t much wrong with him as a prospect, a bold statement to make considering nearly every NBA draft prospect has at least one major flaw in their game, usually more.

Last year, the concern with Ben Simmons was that he couldn’t shoot. Brandon Ingram was too raw and thin, Jaylen Brown couldn’t create his own offense or shoot, Dragan Bender didn’t have an offensive game and Kris Dunn played too out of control and can’t shoot, etc.

With Fultz, there’s nothing major to point out.

Fultz was in Arizona last week, playing in Tempe against Arizona State on Wednesday and in Tucson against No. 7 Arizona Sunday.

Against the Sun Devils, Fultz took a below-average first half filled with astounding mistakes by his teammates and turned it into a 29-point night with an additional eight rebounds and nine assists. As the clips below will show, Fultz could have easily had 15 assists on the night while he was playing passively and getting his team involved in the first 30 minutes. Near the end of the game, he decided he’d had enough and exploded for 18 points in the final 5:11.

The far more anticipated of the two games, however, was against the Wildcats. For almost all of the game, Fultz was covered by Kadeem Allen, one of the best perimeter defenders in the country who possesses the type of athleticism Fultz will face in the NBA.

Fultz had an inefficient day, shooting 8-of-23 from the field. His scoring arsenal was still on display, but Arizona’s aggressive man-to-man defense forced Fultz to beat them on his own, leading to some uncharacteristic misses.

“Some shots that he usually finishes [didn’t] go down,” Washington head coach Lorenzo Romar said of Fultz’s performance after the game, saying the freshman would have had his usual 20-plus points had he gotten to the free throw line more.

While it wasn’t as much of a spectacle as his play in Tempe, Fultz’s offensive prowess was still on display like it was earlier in the week.

He profiles as a player who can create his own shot and those for teammates at a superb rate thanks to the prototypical size and athleticism matching the new breed of NBA point guards. His 6-foot-4, 195-pound frame is very similar to recent top-5 picks at his position like D’Angelo Russell, Dunn and Emmanuel Mudiay.

The 18-year-old is currently averaging 23.7 points, six assists and 6.1 rebounds per game. According to College Basketball Reference’s database that goes back to the 1993-94 season, no freshman has averaged at least 20 points, five assists and five rebounds in a full season. Fultz is doing it shooting 48 percent on a bad team that’s 9-12.

Where Fultz makes his money (eventually) is attacking the rim. When he was asked after Sunday’s game about his jumper, Fultz admitted it’s something he always works at because he’s always been a driver.

“It’s pretty hard to stop me from going to the rim,” he said Sunday.

His scoring ability by slashing to the basket is elite for his level and, as he develops physically, should remain elite as a pro.

Fultz’s jumper should make him a player who can be at least an average three-point shooter at the next level. His 66-percent mark at the free-throw line suggests his 41-percent from deep on 4.6 attempts per won’t hold over the course of the season, but he’s definitely improving as a shooter.

Washington Wizards fans who have watched John Wall’s career know that he has developed from using his blistering speed and explosive hops to a fault, to learning how to caress it. Wall now uses his athleticism as a weapon of the most dangerous degree, turning it on and off in a pinch, sometimes a handful of times in one play.

Any young point guard has to be good at doing this to be great in the NBA  — even with slower point guards, Suns fans can attest to how terrific Steve Nash was at this — and Fultz shows the promise to eventually be on Wall’s level in that one regard.

The key to watching Fultz as a playmaker is to not focus on how difficult the passes are, but rather how at ease he is setting up his teammates, something a television analyst will label leading up to the draft as “making the right play.”

“He has a high, high basketball IQ,” Romar said. “He understands what’s going on out there.”

Fultz is going to have much more space in the NBA, where floor spacing reigns supreme. What Fultz described about that style of play shows in his game, even at the college level.

“I think it’s a great way to get guys open because you have to help,” Fultz said after the game Sunday. “There’s always someone open.”

Fultz said he watches a lot of film, not only of him but of his teammates as well. After every game he will watch, looking at missed opportunities. Being a hyper-aware player shows in how he distributes the ball.

The mistake that’s easy to make with that, however, is to assume that means Fultz is not capable of some sublime playmaking and passing. For whatever reason — possibly because Lonzo Ball at UCLA is one of the best passers the draft process has seen in the past decade — this gets overlooked, and when Fultz is going to be passing to far more capable teammates, look out.

A crucial sprinkle in Fultz’s slashing game is that, when he’s changing speeds, he’s paying attention to where the defense and his teammates are and realizes what space he can attack in order to make the end result the right one.

Mix in all of these skills with a solid handle and good athleticism and you get a terrifying player in transition that can do whatever the situation presents, whether that’s a tomahawk jam, a slowed-down reading of the floor to hit an open shooter or a filthy euro-step finish.

Defensively, Fultz played zone almost exclusively in the two games. In that system, his job is to not lose track of the players around him while having proper closeouts on potential jumpers and containing drives. Taking into consideration the Pac-12’s absurd standard of foul calls with almost any body contact by a defender, Fultz did his job well in the two games.

The last clip of the closeout and contain of Arizona’s Allonzo Trier was impressive for a multitude of reasons: the closeout, the containment considering Trier’s reputation of drawing fouls around the rim and doing enough to keep Trier off-tilt with his finish.

His shooting is something to keep an eye on. Fultz had the profile of being streaky coming into this season and banking on 20 games of a college season is a mistake. With that in mind, it’s still a noticeable improvement, and marking him down as someone who could at least avoid being a negative in that regard doesn’t seem like too outlandish of a statement to make at this time.

A weakness to note for Fultz is his demeanor on the court this season. It does not take a body language expert to tell you Fultz was extremely frustrated in the ASU game throughout, and while some see Fultz picking his spots, others see him being just plain lazy.

FanRag Sports’ Jack Magruder included worrisome comments from scouts visiting Arizona to see Fultz, doubting his work ethic in-game.

The game in Tucson showed Fultz still has to make adjustments for length at the rim, but as some of the earlier clips showed, he is still more than capable of doing it. As he has said, he’s going to look back on the film and notice where he went wrong and grow. Even after taking that into consideration, though, it’s still a key area to watch for him throughout the rest of the process.

There is another side to the concerns regarding Fultz’s energy on the court. He’s doing practically everything for this team and carrying them to a record below .500, which makes you wonder how much worse the very young Huskies would be without him.

He’s bearing that workload playing a high amount of minutes. Fultz sat for less than a minute in the two games combined and in the last six games his totals are 40, 37, 43, 39, 39 and 40.

Last year’s No. 1 overall pick Simmons had the same sort of scrutiny, but like Fultz, he was also in a bad situation and asked to do a ton on a heavy minutes load (he averaged 34.9 minutes per game and Fultz is at 35.6).

Still, he did not take over either game entirely, and instead, did so in small stretches like he has at other points of the season, giving some merit to the previous claims. Whoever is evaluating Fultz has to decide how serious of a problem it is, and in the case of Simmons, it wasn’t enough for him to fall out of the top spot — and Simmons was even benched due to academic issues.

As for Fultz’s turnovers, mistakes are bound to happen for a college freshman with that much responsibility, and his 12.6 turnover percentage is surprisingly low, especially when compared to Ball’s 18.4 turnover percentage for a UCLA team with far more talent around him.

The bottom line on Fultz is that he’s the most clear-cut No. 1 pick the process has seen for quite some time. He has a good path to becoming at least an All-Star point guard in his career, potentially something more as a franchise piece to build around.

That should be incredibly appealing for any team, especially the Suns, who have not had an All-Star since Steve Nash and could end the decade with that still being the case.

As covered previously, the Suns are currently in the middle of making a choice regarding point guard Eric Bledsoe, the best player on the team by a considerable margin. He’s in his prime, playing the best basketball of his career at 27 years old with a history of knee injuries. His team is going nowhere for the time being, and the Suns have to decide whether they should trade him at perhaps the highest his value will ever be or seeing what happens in the summer of 2019 when he’s an unrestricted free agent and 29 years old.

Ever since Ryan McDonough arrived in the Valley, he’s been trying to find the right backcourt. He started with Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe, then added Isaiah Thomas, but quickly transitioned to Bledsoe and Brandon Knight.

Half the hard work is over after the way Devin Booker has played, who at the very least is a capable starting shooting guard for the foreseeable future.

Now, it’s about finding his ideal partner for the future core of the team, and if the Suns were to win the lottery in May, the spot would be filled.

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