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Fultz looks like just what Sixers need, as player and person | Mike Sielski

The young guard is raw but coachable, and perfect for the Sixers. "There's not a combination of four other players … that he can't play with," one of his old coaches said.

Markelle Fultz signs a basketball after he was taken first overall by the 76ers in the NBA draft.
Markelle Fultz signs a basketball after he was taken first overall by the 76ers in the NBA draft.Read moreYong Kim

They bonded over bow ties. Rafael Chillious had recruited Markelle Fultz to the University of Washington, and before long they found that they shared a fondness for that George Will-Malcolm Jenkins style of neckwear. They'd talk over the phone about suits. Chillious, an assistant coach on Lorenzo Romar's staff at UW, advised him on how to find the proper fit and cut. Their conversations became about more than fashion and basketball. Fultz's father hadn't been around when Fultz was a boy. Chillious became like an uncle to him. It's a familiar story in sports.

"You talk about life," Chillious said in a phone interview Monday, the same day the 76ers finalized the trade with Boston that allowed them to select Fultz with the NBA draft's No. 1 pick Thursday. "You start to understand what makes him tick. There are a lot of guys who won't tell a kid, while they're recruiting him, what he did bad. But I'd say, 'Hey, man, you did this and this and this.' And every time, he'd say, 'Thanks, Coach.' The ones who want to be good are going to do the things you suggest. They might bristle at first, but they're going to do them. You've got to be able to coach them, and he always accepted my criticism."

That background reveals something good about Fultz. Coachable is good. Coachable is a terrific personal quality for an athlete to have. But what kind of athlete are the Sixers getting in Fultz? What kind of player will he be?

He's a point guard, but so is Kentucky's De'Aaron Fox, and the Sixers could have stayed where they were and drafted Fox at No. 3. Fultz was a fine shooter in his only season of college basketball, making more than 41 percent of his three-point attempts. But another Kentucky guard, Malik Monk, is regarded as a superior outside shooter to Fultz, and the Sixers probably could have traded down and still had the chance to pick Monk. The Celtics, of course, had the first pick first, and their general manager, Danny Ainge, is an astute fellow, and they decided that they could afford to pass on Fultz. Did they see an irrevocable flaw in his game? Did they think he wouldn't fit?

"In terms of the Celtics in general, the beauty of Markelle Fultz is there's not a combination of four other players on the floor that he can't play with," Romar said. "Some guys, they can't play without a really good point guard next to them. Some guys need a lot of shooters around them. Markelle could be on the floor with four other point guards and still do really well.

"He's just really adaptable because of his versatility. If Boston had taken him number one, that would make sense to me. There's not a team in the league where it wouldn't make sense, again, because of his adaptability."

[Markelle Fultz proved his mettle at famed DeMatha High School.]

It would seem to make particular sense for the Sixers. They need shooters, plural. They need another ball handler to pair with Ben Simmons, because for all the talk of having Simmons be their point guard, he might show that he's not suited to play the position, or he might prove better as a power forward, or he might get hurt again. It was always in the Sixers' best interest to draft the player they considered the best available, regardless of his position. Prioritizing a player's ability to complement Simmons made little sense when Simmons himself remains, for the moment, such a mystery. It just so happened that, in the Sixers' eyes, the best player and the best fit met in the same 19-year-old phenom.

"On the offensive end, he can do everything," Chillious said. "If someone's open, they're going to get the ball, and all of the guys who will be on the floor with him in the NBA can make shots. You don't have that in college. You can play him alongside Ben Simmons, who has the ball in his hands a lot. What he's most ready to be is to be coached. He's going to be coachable. And when it comes to the IQ part, it's off the charts."

Look, Chillious and Romar are invested in Fultz's success. They recruited the kid. They coached the kid. They like the kid. If Fultz turns out to be a star in the NBA, it only benefits them, especially Romar, who was fired after the season and is now Sean Miller's associate head coach at Arizona. It boosts his reputation, maybe helps him get another head coaching job sometime soon.

[What they're saying about the Sixers picks after Fultz.]

But Romar also previously coached Brandon Roy and Isaiah Thomas, who became elite NBA players. Roy pretty much entered the league as one, winning the rookie of the year award in 2006-07 with the Portland Trail Blazers. It's possible that Romar simply knows a great guard when he sees one.

"People were critical of Brandon: 'Well, I don't know. Does he play hard enough?'" Romar said. "Well, he was so smooth and effortless in the way he went about his business. He played the game right. He's not just going to jack the ball up every time he touched it. Markelle is very much like that. People will see.

"Put it like this. A lot of people say, 'Who is he like?' I am not comparing him to LeBron or Magic or anybody like that, but when those guys came along, it was, 'Well, who's LeBron like?' 'I don't know.' 'Who does Magic play like?' 'I don't know. They're different.' Markelle is like that. I don't know who I'd compare him to."

So what kind of player are the Sixers getting in Markelle Fultz? They're getting a player like Markelle Fultz. Coachable. Raw. The kid who, from every available indication, made sense for where they are and where they want to go. They have to hope it's enough.