There’s an update to this story here. The original is after the jump.

Thankfully a Woj bomb brought an end to the Markelle Fultz shoulder speculation.

ESPN reported Tuesday afternoon that the Sixers rookie had fluid drained from his right shoulder and will soon visit a specialist.

Fultz’s agent was quoted in the story:

“Markelle had a shoulder injury and fluid drained out of the back of his shoulder,” agent Raymond Brothers told ESPN. “He literally cannot raise up his arms to shoot the basketball. He decided to try and fight through the pain to help the team. He has a great attitude. We are committed to finding a solution to get Markelle back to 100 percent.”

Two hours before that news dropped, Fultz was absent from Sixers practice, at least the portion that media was allowed to watch. The rest of the team was shooting free-throws when training was opened up.

Brett Brown answered questions about the shoulder and we broached the subject with a generic question; your thoughts on Fultz after four games?

“He’s continuing to feel more comfortable,” Brown said. “He’s continuing to feel more confident in the structure of what we’re doing. It’s always clear to me how young he is. It’s always clear to me the patience level that we’re all going to have to have, trying to continue to help his shoulder, you know, just get a confidence level from a health perspective, that enters my mind as well. But last night in open court he did some things where he put somebody in spin mode, and crossed him, crossed him, and was running right at their back. He had deflections. There were some positives last night from Markelle Fultz.”

I asked Brown if he was concerned about Fultz’s hesitation to shoot the ball.

“I think none of us can go past – because this seems to be like a repetitive conversation, and I get it, I understand it – we can’t dismiss the fact that there is some concern that he obviously has with his shoulder,” Brown explained. “And we continue to look at it. We continue to try to stay on top of that. But the other parts of his game I think are stuff like, you step back and you can understand why he was the first player chosen (in the draft). But that part of it I understand. We all do, led by him. We’ve just got to find ways to continue to get that healthy and I think that’s going to produce confidence.”

Marshall Harris, from the TV station formerly known as Comcast SportsNet, followed up by asking if the Sixers, through their medical staff, had thought about shutting down Fultz to let the shoulder heal.

“That’s a fair question,” the head coach replied. “They’re going through that on their side of the office right now and just trying to come up with a thoughtful plan to deliver Markelle further into the season. I don’t know what that’s going to be. I will, like I always am, be sort of directed by the medical staff. But your question is fair.”

Now we understand that non-answer. The shoulder was always worse than imagined, at least according to one of the involved parties.

Fultz looked “off” again on Tuesday night, playing 16 minutes and contributing 2 points on 1-4 shooting, 2 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal, and 3 turnovers. He only attempted one jump shot and seemed very reluctant to shoot the ball even when given open looks. If he can’t raise his arms, that would make it pretty damn hard to shoot!

There were a lot of people who thought it made sense to shut down Fultz if he wasn’t 100%, and that looks like it will be the case now. We’re four games into Fultz’s rookie season, so let’s nip this in the bud and get him healthy. The optics aren’t great, but I think Sixers fans would rather see a defined path forward instead of forcing a guy onto the floor who really shouldn’t be out there.