No one’s watching, but Markelle Fultz is shining at Washington

Stud freshman Markelle Fultz is shining for Washington, even though not even people are noticing

Mid-season Pac-12 basketball is a curious practice of basketball competition. To watch the games is to become almost nocturnal, and to follow the league is to value team play and rivalry over star power. It’s a very curious conference to join if you’re, say, the top basketball prospect in the nation.

Last Wednesday’s game between the Arizona State Sun Devils and Washington Huskies in Tempe, Arizona demonstrated all of these points well. Markelle Fultz, that guy I mentioned up above when I called him the top basketball prospect in America, went mostly unnoticed within ASU’s student section all night. Though he was typically spectacular, nobody in the home seats really seemed to care.

Is Fultz’s choice to attend Washington to blame here? The fight for his commitment became well-documented even as it unfolded quickly; the victor of the fight was a Washington roster considerably less exciting than Fultz’s other options. Last year, Marquese Chriss and Dejounte Murray brought prestige and interest to the country’s Northwestern-most Division I basketball program for the first time since 2011, when the team made the NCAA tournament. Next year, Michael Porter Jr. will bring even more hype to Seattle when he joins Lorenzo Romar’s squad as a freshman.

This year though, Fultz has become the caboose of the Chriss-Murray hype train and simultaneously the front locomotive of the Porter Jr. phenomenon. What that has meant for him and the Washington basketball program this year, thus far, is anonymity. After Wednesday’s loss to ASU, they sit at 9-11; 10th in the Pac-12.

Looking and listening around Arizona State’s student section during the first half of Wednesday’s game, it would have been impossible to notice what team the Sun Devils were playing. In fact, but for one fan possessed by a desire to peeve Romar from the stands, you’d have legitimately wondered if these students knew who Fultz, Romar or even Chriss (a current Phoenix Suns starter) were. Between the echoes of one agitator’s “Stay in the box, Loorreeenzooo!” chants were whispers of praise for ASU studs Shannon Evans II and Tra Holder; nary a mention of the stud point guard leading a second-half comeback.

And then, all at once, Fultz took hold of the attention of all who had stuck around. He turned a quiet, frustrating first half into a serious magic show. Pairing with Matisse Thybulle to gun the Huskies back from a double-digit deficit, Fultz spun passes and shots with pinpoint precision, and fans took notice. One step ahead of everyone in the building, Fultz started to have fun. He rose up for two consecutive 3-pointers early in the half just when it appeared frustration might take him over, and the rest was just a highlight reel. Fultz would finish with 28 points, 9 assists, and 8 rebounds.

But back to the question that will be at the crux of every conversation concerning Fultz until he gets drafted: Was this the correct decision? It takes only a look back one summer to find context for the freshman’s school selection.

Last year’s top overall pick, Ben Simmons, was even more hyped and even more resolutely considered to be the best option before his commitment to Louisiana State in 2015. He followed family ties and a better situation into the Bayou for the 2015-16 basketball season, but failed to take LSU to the heights most assumed were possible. Since then, the commitment Simmons made to LSU as a student and community member have been put into question.

However, Fultz’s situation already looks different than Simmons’; the on-court relationship that the Washington guard has built with Romar was one of the most impressive takeaways from last week’s game. Whereas Simmons grew up in Australia and followed family ties (his godfather is an assistant at LSU), Fultz left his home in Maryland to move across the country and join Romar’s program. Seeing the two interact, it makes sense to see Fultz – a star before he was even an adult – in purple, leading the Huskies and dazzling a community. The sterling near-triple-double that filled the box score truly took a backseat to the impressiveness of pulling a worrisome Huskies team back into the game.

There’s a half-year’s worth of research to be done by NBA teams looking to draft Fultz, but at the halfway point of that process, we can at least say for certain that choosing Washington has made Fultz’s displays more impressive, not less. Though broadcasters shove his Pac-12 games in the latest possible slots and opposing fans feign ignorance toward his skill, Fultz shines brightly in the darkness.