After getting 25 MPG per game in the month of November, Furkan “Korverkmaz” Korkmaz saw his minutes drop down to 15 per game in the month of December. We can blame this directly on Josh Richardson’s return from injury, but “blame” is only the right term to use if you’re exclusively a fan of Korkmaz and you don’t really care how his teams fare. If you’re a fan of the 76ers, the correct way to frame the situation is that we can THANK Josh Richardson for coming back from injury so that Korkmaz doesn’t get so many unearned and undeserved minutes.
Except now Korkmaz went and got a career high in 21 minutes and I can’t tell if this will result in more minutes for him or if it will just be treated as a one-time anomaly never to be repeated. I think I know how Sixers fans feel about Korkmaz’s minutes situation. And I also think I know how Turks feel about it.
There was a point this season when Korkmaz was leading the 76ers in total threes made. That’s pretty disappointing given that the Sixers’ entire roster-construction plan was to surround Ben Simmons with shooters. Korkmaz is a fine shooter, but if he’s your best shooter, then your roster probably has a bunch of bums on it that should learn how to shoot better. Now I’m trying to decide if he’s still the three-point leader for the team.
At first, it seems unlikely, given what I know about Korkmaz’s declining minutes situation. But then I think about how bad Tobes was to start the season, and how Embiid is just a chucker who doesn’t really make that many threes, and how Al Horford is completely washed even though there’s like twenty more years left on his contract, and how Josh Richardson is just betting back into the lineup, and how Mike Scott is too low-volume to ever lead a team in anything other than emoji tattoos. So I looked it up and Korkmaz is still #1 on the Sixers when it comes to splashing triples. Tobes will overtake him soon enough, but you just know for a fact that Ben Simmons is currently composing an angry Instagram post where he alludes to his desire for the Sixers to go out and acquire more shooters for him.