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Was Fultz right pick for Sixers? Tough to find an argument around here | Mike Jensen

The trade to draft the guard receives a remarkable level of approval, even from those who haven't completely Trusted the Process.

Thousands of Philadelphia 76ers fans packed the Piazza at Schmidt’s Commons for a party to watch the NBA draft. The Sixers took Washington guard Markelle Fultz with the No. 1 overall pick.
Thousands of Philadelphia 76ers fans packed the Piazza at Schmidt’s Commons for a party to watch the NBA draft. The Sixers took Washington guard Markelle Fultz with the No. 1 overall pick.Read moreJake Lourim / Staff

Philadelphia, The City That Loves To Argue, is usually good at it when it comes to hoops. You think that? Well, did you think for one second about this?

This week at a City of Basketball Love exposure camp for high school prospects, and at the Chosen League, a top outdoor league in the city, at 10th and Olney, surely the NBA Draft would produce lively debate. This 76ers trade for Markelle Fultz is a good one? Is this freshman guard from Washington worth a big bet?

For those who haven't been Trusting any Processes or paying attention to basketball at all, this draft was a crucial one for the Sixers, with the fan base ready for progress but the need for more talent still apparent. Trading a valuable No. 3 choice and another future first-rounder to move up to No. 1 was a big move, with Fultz the obvious prize.

Around those city stops, there was no debate, only approval. High school ballplayers, who tend to follow the game as closely as anyone in the sport, all in favor of it?

"Totally," said Harrison Eichelberger, a forward from the Westtown School, at the exposure camp at the University of Sciences.

"Good," said Bernard Lightsey, of Imhotep Charter, also at the one-day camp.

"Very good," said Jahmir Williams, of Constitution High, a guard who was at both stops on consecutive days.

"Yeah, yeah, for sure," said Justin Steers of Friends' Central, watching friends at the exposure camp.

All right, what about older folks? The Chosen League is staffed by lifelong hoop fanatics. Go back a few years, and Trusting the Process made some of these same men cringe. Others among them had been on board, saying the Sixers' tank efforts were completely necessary. The Fultz deal? Happy with it?

"In a way, I am," said Donald "Reds" Kenner, PA announcer at the Chosen League, a man who specializes in razzing the players on the court. "The only thing we've got to see, will all of them come together? This year, we're going to Trust the Process. But what are they going to do with the Process after this draft?"

Kenner hesitates just signing on, no asterisks. Three years ago, he'd said, "I stopped being a Sixers fan when they got rid of Iverson."

So in a sense, it's The Process drawing him back in.

"I'm good with it," Kenner said of the Fultz trade itself.

"I think it's a perfect fit," said referee Keith "Showtime" Saunders, who had been another Process skeptic. "They need a point guard who can make the talent better. It's an upgrade."

Pairing Fultz with Ben Simmons, "they can be the best backcourt in the league. … They've finally got a team that can be on TNT, ABC, you know what I mean?"

(Ben Simmons himself is a current Chosen League favorite, since he showed up Tuesday night to watch a game.)

Three years ago, there were mixed opinions at 10th and Olney about drafting an injured Joel Embiid. Rahim Thompson, who runs the Chosen League, said at the time that a rebuilding period was necessary, that all the truly elite teams have been through this stage of rebuilding, that even the Charles Barkley and Allen Iverson teams were not consistent contenders.

"I was always a believer in The Process — I just knew it was going to take a while," Thompson said. "My saying was, the get-back's going to be amazing. So it's looking like the get-back is going to be amazing right now."

Of the Fultz deal and all the approval for it, "We needed a guard," Thompson said. "I wanted De'Aaron Fox if it was going to be the third pick. I didn't want Josh Jackson. We didn't need another 6-10, 6-8 guy. We needed someone who could push the ball up court and then guard the John Walls, Isaiah Thomas. Getting Fultz was like perfect for me."

For teenagers, there is still a mix when it comes to whether the Sixers are their team.

"I like LeBron," said Steers, "so I root for him," meaning wherever James is. As a LeBron fan should be, Steers — who has a slew of Division I offers himself — is up to speed on rumors, including that James has bought a house in Los Angeles.

Steers said he watches the Sixers "a little bit." Lightsey, from Imhotep, professed more devotion.

"They're my team, always," Lightsey said.

For all, it seemed, light at the end of the tunnel, spotted already, keeps growing.

"I Trust, I would say," Eichelberger said.

Not full-bore faith, by the inflection of his words. In recent years, Eichelberger said, he'd watch the Sixers some early in the season, then watch again late in the year to see what improvement had been made.

His belief in Fultz, however, is longstanding. Eichelberger said he'd caught him on mix tapes before Fultz played at Washington. "He's got an NBA-ready body," Eichelberger said, an interesting spin on the fact that Fultz was a late-grower in high school.

In a corner of the court at the University of Sciences, veteran talent scout Norm Eavenson, who saw many of the 2017 draftees early in their high school careers, still wasn't willing to guess which of them would be most successful in the NBA. His point: "You just can't take what you have right now and expect that to be enough. They'll expose what you can't do."

Asked about top three choices, there was conformity among the teenage ballplayers for the top spots. Lonzo Ball also had the trust of the group.

"Fultz, Lonzo for sure, Fox," said Steers.

"Fultz, Ball, Josh Jackson," said Lightsey.

"Fultz, Ball, Jayson Tatum," said Williams.

Eichelberger offered the only variant on the top two.

"Fultz, Fox, Josh Jackson," he said, then added Ball next.

So maybe there was one way to get so many locally to agree. If the Sixers had drafted third as they would have pre-Celtics trade, debates would have raged about who was the right guy. Instead the Sixers completed a trade that at least for this one week all but took debate out of the equation. What has gotten into this city?