July 16, 2019
Former Sixers guard Markelle Fultz announced on Instagram on Monday that he is hosting a basketball camp in early August at his alma mater, Maryland's DeMatha Catholic High School.
The decision for this specific person to host a basketball camp seems odd, because Fultz's entire reputation as a professional basketball player revolves around the deterioration of his skills. Recapping Fultz's bizarre time with the Sixers would take entirely too long, but you can read all about it here.
The Sixers traded Fultz to the Orlando Magic last season after he appeared in 33 games across two seasons, failing to demonstrate any of the shot-making ability and general basketball know-how that he flashed in college, and which turned him into the No. 1 overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft. Whether the problem was an injury or a mental block remains, to this day, unclear, as does Fultz's status as an NBA player.
Fultz's social media presence has thinned over the years, to the point where he's deleted the majority of his Instagram posts and now has just four spanning the last four years, all with the comments turned off.
All of this is to say, why anyone in Fultz's orbit thought it would be a good idea for the 21-year-old to host a basketball camp before he's shown he can consistently shoot the ball in a game is beyond me. Fultz seems like a good person going through a confusing and trying time, but publicizing this — a basketball camp organized by a struggling basketball player — just makes no sense.
Fultz not even taking the time to fix the spelling of the word "competitive" in the camp flyer displayed in the post, and instead noting the typo in the post's caption, is also confusing. So much of what's going on here opens him up to criticism. Why does it seem like Fultz is trying to navigate this by himself?
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Maybe this event will be a coming-out party for Fultz – where he shows off a fixed jump shot and throws down the dunks like ones he used to share on social media – in the high school gym where he became a sensation. Maybe it won't.
Interestingly, the Sixers face the Magic in the preseason, in Orlando, on Oct. 13. Whether Fultz will participate in that game is unclear.
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