Liberty Ballers is asking for the community’s help in ranking the Sixers’ full roster (12 active players, 3 inactive players, 2 two-way players) according to on-court value for the upcoming season. When casting a vote, you should concern yourself only with each player’s ability to contribute to winning this season. So, for example, maybe you believe Markelle Fultz will be a valuable member of the Sixers core over the next 5 seasons, but you also think he’ll be slight negative on the court for most of this season. Meanwhile, you expect Robert Covington to be an integral part of the starting lineup in 2018-2019, but in 3 or 4 years, you expect him to bottom out. From that perspective, Markelle would be the more player over the long haul, but you should place Covington above him in this ranking, due to Covington’s projected positive contributions this year. You can find the original post here, which includes the Sixers’ projected final roster.

The voting for the 12th most valuable player on the Sixers for the 2018-2019 season has concluded. We’ve seen poll results be both runaways and close calls in this exercise; the vote for #12 fell into the runaway category. With 64% of the vote, Furkan Korkmaz was voted as the 12th most valuable player on the sixers for this season.

Furkan Korkmaz

Furkan Korkmaz was drafted back in 2016 (26th overall), in the same draft that brought the Sixers Ben Simmons and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot (RIP) (he’s not dead, just no longer with the team). But Korkmaz didn’t join the Sixers for the year that followed the 2016 NBA Draft, instead playing one more season in Europe with Anadolu Efes. After Korkmaz eventually did sign with Philly in the summer of 2017, he spent a lot of his time with the Delaware 87ers. It was an unremarkable rookie season.

And then, the Furkan Game™ happened. On July 6th, 2018, during Summer League play, Furkan Korkmaz dropped 40 points on the Boston Celtics in just 28 minutes. The showing gave Sixers fans hope that the team had secretly been stashing away a lethal marksman who could play on the wing. After all, Korkmaz nailed eight three-pointers in that 40-point performance.

Make no mistake, Korkmaz can shoot it. The problem is that it’s tough to tell if Korkmaz has any other NBA-level skills aside from his shooting. We haven’t seen too much playmaking or slashing out of the 2nd-year guard-forward. He’s of average height at 6’7”, but he’s thin at just about 190 lbs and he doesn’t possess elite athleticism. Most importantly, Korkmaz may never be able to improve his defense to the point where he’s anything more than a backend of the rotation type player.

Given the Sixers lack of wing depth, Korkmaz should get some opportunities to prove himself this season. It wouldn’t be at all surprising to see coach Brett Brown attempt to use Korkmaz in the same capacity that Brown utilized Marco Belinelli. If Korkmaz can be a near 40% shooter from deep, he should be able to carve out a role. But if Furkan is more like an average-to-below-average three-point shooter, and isn’t able to overcome his lack of size and athleticism on the defensive end, he’ll fall out of the rotation entirely. This season could potentially decide Korkmaz’ future with the Sixers.

On to #11