Markelle Fultz is relearning how to be a star

Markelle Fultz’s first two NBA seasons were defined by injury and a seemingly lost ability to shoot. But early into his third season, he’s showing new life as a member of the Orlando Magic.

In July 1966, Bob Dylan, in the immediate aftermath of releasing three of the greatest records in the history of popular music, crashed his motorcycle. After this accident, he did not tour again for nearly eight years and, apart from the surge of productivity that was the Basement Tapes, released music at a much slower rate than he had over the previous four years.

More damningly, the music he did release in this period was only intermittently good, none of it measuring up to his previous achievements. Looking back at this time and the crisis of confidence he had as his muse seemed to have vanished, he said in a 1978 interview, three years after the triumphant release of Blood on the Tracks: “It took me a long time to get to do consciously what I used to be able to do unconsciously.”

For the first time in nearly a year, fans are now able to watch Markelle Fultz play in actual basketball games that matter, no longer having to rely on grainy footage shot by a beat reporter or more stylized clips strung together by a team’s social media manager. As a member of the Orlando Magic, he has played in all of the team’s first three games and though it’s foolish to make too much of what one sees so early in the season, in this case, merely seeing Fultz on the court is enough.

Despite being the No. 1 overall pick just two years ago, expectations have shifted for Fultz so much that stardom is no longer the hope in most fans’ eyes. When he was drafted, he was expected to be a franchise cornerstone, a game-changer. Now, if he can just be a solid point guard, a reliable starter, then things will be considered to have turned out okay in light of what came before. Yet optimists can watch clips of him playing in Philadelphia and these first few games with Orlando and see just why so many teams were so high on him two years ago.

He has a very good feel for the game and is great at creating quality looks for himself and for others. What he needs to overcome now is a desire to force everything, as if to show he’s still capable of future greatness.

Accordingly, he seems to make ill-advised passes and take equally ill-advised shots, desperate to make something happen — in just 24.7 a night, he’s taking 11.3 shots per game. It’d be more worrisome if we were talking about a player who has appeared in more than 36 NBA games, but for now, he is still being graded on a curve. However, this year, as he likely gets more minutes and more consistent playing time than ever before, that curve will slowly vanish.

Luckily for Fultz, there are several things working in his favor this season that were not the case in Philadelphia. The Magic, unlike the Sixers, are not trying to win a championship this season, meaning that his margin for error will be much higher than it would be in Philadelphia. For the Magic, a successful season would simply consist of making a return trip to the postseason, which in the East, should be only a mildly formidable task.

Also, Orlando is not exactly deep at the point guard position. Their starting point guard last year was D.J. Augustin, who is good, but uninspiring. If Fultz begins to show promise, the mere possibility of what he could become may be enough for Steve Clifford to take a chance and give Fultz more of Augustin’s minutes, if not make him the starter.

Alongside Augustin and Fultz is Michael Carter-Williams, who is transitioning into more of a wing role this upcoming season, giving Fultz even less competition for playing time. Such opportunities will be a great change of pace from the start of last season, when Brett Brown was trying to balance Fultz’s development alongside Ben Simmons and T.J. McConnell, two other players deserving of minutes at point guard who did not always mesh that well alongside Fultz.

In limited minutes as a bench player this season, Fultz has looked impressive on the whole. He is shooting 47.1 percent from the field, and has repeatedly displayed a great instinct for finding gaps in the defense in order to reach the rim, where he is taking over a third of his shots while shooting 75 percent there so far. The confidence that had seemed to have evaporated in Philadelphia appears to have largely returned. While he is only 3-for-13 from deep in the first three games, it is encouraging that he is not shying away from shooting jumpers, and seems to believe that it is only a matter of time before they start falling for him as they did at Washington.

Fultz also has a great feel for the game and has already shown why he was thought of as a supreme playmaker coming out of college, equally adept at creating shots for himself and others. He has a long way to go, of course, and a lot to prove, before fans are willing to fully believe that he is a reliable player, but these first few games have at least provided glimpses of the star he was originally expected to be.

Fultz is still only 21 years old. He is far from even the beginning of what could be his prime, and hopefully, in a few years, this strange start to his career will be a strange footnote to an otherwise successful career. There are almost always teams willing to bet that they can be the one to bring out a prospect’s previously untapped potential. It’s why Derrick Williams and Michael Beasley kept getting teams to sign them — less because of what they actually had done on the court in the NBA, and more because of what they were once imagined to become.

It may be that Fultz now finds himself in a similar place that Dylan did 50 years ago as he tried to write songs that just would not come and needs to find a new way to do what once came so naturally. It’s not that Fultz became the first overall pick and the most highly touted point guard prospect in almost a decade through nothing but luck and raw talent, but that the tools that made him those things are in need of being reexamined and reworked.

His shot was so fluid at Washington, his decision-making so instinctual, his command of the court so confident. Now, two years into the start of an NBA career that could charitably be described as fitful, those same impulses that served him so well in the past may need to be relearned. What he once used to be able to do unconsciously, he has had to come to do intentionally. Perhaps on the other side of this struggle is his carving out a well-deserved place for him in the NBA; perhaps his once imagined stardom lies upon the horizon. Making any definite claims about who Fultz will become is foolhardy for now, but the raw talent still appears to be there, just waiting to be properly utilized, no longer stymied by a debilitating injury.