Philadelphia 76ers: Forth quarter Furkan Korkmaz is a very real thing

NBA players aren’t generally considered to be in their prime until they hit 25 years old.

Sure, you’ll get the early bloomer who enters the league a fully grown man and only marginally improves between season to season, or players like Tyrese Maxey who jump from rotational players to starters by their second pro season, but for the most part, players develop their game and become better as they become more and more comfortable with each passing game, series, and season.

Now granted, in the modern-day NBA, where most players enter the league before they reach drinking age, not every player gets an opportunity to work things out on the court. Sekou Doumbouya and Luka Šamanić, for example, were both drafted just outside of the lottery in 2019 and are now signed to two-way contracts with their NBA futures very much in doubt.

At 24, Furkan Korkmaz is just on the cusp of entering his NBA prime and is subsequently playing the best basketball of his career for the Philadelphia 76ers, especially in the fourth quarter.

Furkan Korkmaz has shined for the Philadelphia 76ers in the fourth quarter.

Furkan Kormaz is currently averaging the fifth most points per game for the Philadelphia 76ers through their first 11 games of the 2021-22 NBA season (14.5).

He’s hitting 42.6 percent of his 5.9 3 point shots per game, good for the third and second-highest marks in the NBA, and has almost doubled his assists per game total from the season prior, going from 1.5 in 2020-21 to 2.8 in 2021-22.

And best of all, Korkmaz has developed into a lights-out fourth quarter performer who is making buckets at a clip few others can match league-wide.

Through the first 10 games of the season, Korkmaz ranks third Association-wide in fourth quarter points scored, trailing only Cole Anthony and DeMar DeRozan with 65 points scored.

That’s very good.

What’s also good is Korkmaz’s average fourth quarter points scored per game, 6.5, which is tied for the eighth-best mark league-wide alongside his former Philadelphia 76ers teammate Trey Burke and is 2.3 points higher than the team’s next best fourth quarter scorers, Georges Niang and Joel Embiid.

But wait, it gets better. Not only is Korkmaz scoring a bunch of points in the fourth quarter of games, but he’s doing so at an efficient clip, hitting 50 percent of his shots from the field and 48.3 percent of his attempts from beyond the arc.

While that 3 point shooting clip likely won’t hold up in clutch time situations over a full season, it’s incredibly nice to see other players pick up the slack in the fourth quarter when the Sixers need points most, especially after last season, where the team didn’t have a single player who averaged two or more 3 pointers per game in the fourth quarter and only one player, Embiid, who took four or more shots.

If Korkmaz can keep up his late game efficiency when the team returns to full strength, it’ll surely go a long way to Doc Rivers’ squad playing a full 48 minutes of compelling basketball, instead of giving up long stretches without putting points on the board.

Do I think Furkan Korkmaz has overnight transformed into one of the NBA’s premier closers? No, I really don’t. As fun as Korkmaz’s game has been to watch so far this season, he’s far more of a complementary piece than a featured one, especially on a team with championship aspirations. But for a team trying their hardest to grow together despite an increasingly dire collection of extenuating circumstances, having another player capable of picking up points in bunches is a very valuable asset.