I think I traversed the entire length of the Markelle Fultz reactionary spectrum last night.
It started with the Wells Fargo Center crowd calling for him to “shoooooooot!” whenever he had the ball in his hands, which felt a little boorish to me. What kind of of rudimentary behavior is this?
But when the first shot went up, a mid-range jumper that didn’t even go in, I heard the roar from the stands and thought, “ah wow, they’re really pulling for this kid, this is special.”
It was confounding for me, because I’ve never really experienced anything like it. The entire thing had an overwhelmingly positive connotation to it, because the fans truly want Markelle to be successful and they want to help him through his struggles. It’s ridiculously antithetical to everything we’ve ever been taught about the Philadelphia fan base.
Still, the longer I sat there, I couldn’t shake the feeling of how elementary this whole exercise was. Here’s the #1 draft pick from a year ago, playing against a depleted Bulls team at home and getting cheers just for attempting a jump shot in a game.
How low has the bar been set?
