A couple days ago Mike Schmitz, formerly of DraftExpress and now of ESPN, tweeted out this interesting, perhaps troubling video of Markelle Fultz shooting free throws during a Sixers training camp practice:
That is one ugly-ass free throw stroke! Fultz had a lovely-looking jumper as a freshman at Washington, and shot a very respectable 41 percent from the college three-point line last season, but he was not an especially good free throw shooter, and the concern was that he was changing his stroke to improve his free throw performance, possibly to the detriment of his overall shooting. That idea was quickly shot down by none other than Fultz himself, according to CSNPhilly:
“My free throw’s going to look the same as in college,” Fultz said Thursday. “I’m just trying to look at different ways to see how the ball can go in the hoop.”
Sixers coach Brett Brown didn’t sound too thrilled to see Fultz tinkering with something that maybe wasn’t all that broken to begin with:
“His percentages revealed that he’s a more-than-capable shooter,” Brown said. “I think right now him trying to figure out how to not overcomplicate things and maybe make over something that didn’t need to be made over as much as he might of thought is a challenge.”
Probably no big deal, right? Probably it was just his free throw stroke, and not his jumper, and anyway Fultz said he wasn’t actually going to change anything. No way this would be a thing where the Sixers would find themselves, days later, pushing Fultz to reconstruct his jumper back the way it used to be, just a couple weeks before the start of the regular season. Ha ha! We are worrying about nothing, here, I’m sure.
Wait. Oh no. No. What are you doing, Markelle Fultz? October 1 is not when you want to be reconstructing a key player’s jump shot!