Blue Ribbon Report, Vol. 15: Perseverance helps Vols’ John Fulkerson live up to his potential
Blue Ribbon Report, Vol. 15: Perseverance helps Vols’ John Fulkerson live up to his potential
Today’s edition of the Blue Ribbon Report
Chris Dortch looks at the story of Tennessee senior John Fulkerson, who has had quite a journey during his career in Knoxville
Perseverance helps Vols’ Fulkerson live up to his potential
John Fulkerson (Tennessee Athletics)
By Chris Dortch (@cdortch)
It’s midway through the first half of a December 2016 game between visiting Lipscomb and host Tennessee, and the Bisons’ Garrison Mathews, a 6-5, 215-pound linebacker doing a spot-on shooting guard impersonation, is speeding up the court as Vol guard Shembari Phillips races to cut him off. Two strides in front of the 3-point line, Phillips squares himself in front of Mathews, who loses his defender at the top of the key with a right-hand dribble that throws Phillips off balance. Mathews shifts the ball back to his left hand and steams toward the basket.
Suddenly there’s another obstacle in Mathews’ path—Tennessee freshman forward John Fulkerson, who has left his man and stands with his heels on the charge circle, bracing himself for a collision. Mathews leaves the ground en route to the rim and slams into Fulkerson, who falls to the floor, Mathews on top of him. Mathews quickly gets up, but Fulkerson—who was called for a blocking foul—is still on his back, writhing in pain. Phillips rushes to help his teammate up, but suddenly draws back his arms, recoils in horror, and begins slowly backing away.
Fulkerson is seriously hurt.
The fall after the collision was bad enough, but when Mathews landed on Fulkerson, who at 6-9 weighed about 25 pounds less than the Lipscomb player, it was too much for the scrawny freshman’s body to bear. Fulkerson’s right wrist was shattered, and his right elbow popped out of its socket.
“I knew it was pretty significant as soon as it happened,” Fulkerson says, nearly four years after that eventful play.
Mathews, Lipscomb’s all-time leading scorer who went on to sign a two-way contract with the NBA’s Washington Wizards, knew it too. He has vivid recollections of the play.
“I remember seeing Fulkerson in the lane,” Mathews says. “I knew he was a little bit too low in the circle. The way I play I try to draw fouls, anyway. I decided to go up for the layup. I remember the contact, and then getting up and looking down and seeing his bone popping out. It was a shock.
“I went to half court and said, ‘Oh my gosh.’ My coach [Casey Alexander] said you have to shoot free throws. And I said, ‘He’s hurt, give him a minute.’ I don’t know if coach heard me. But I had to get away from there. You know those gruesome injuries that make you kind of cringe? That was one of them. I remember feeling bad for him.”
Then-Tennessee associate head coach Rob Lanier, now the head coach at Georgia State, also used the g-word to describe Fulkerson’s injury.
“It was gruesome,” Lanier says. “John was just trying to take a charge. But in this game, things like that can happen quickly. You can be playing well, and just like that be gone. Fulky had a long road to get back, just to be able to straighten out his arm.”
Though Fulkerson would eventually come to believe his injury was a blessing in disguise, it was a blow to him, and to his team, because he was lost for the season just a few games after he began asserting himself on both ends of the floor.
After a 12-point, 10-rebound, two-assist, five-block, two-steal game against Oregon in the Maui Invitational three weeks before, Fulkerson was elevated to the starting lineup and had begun to deliver consistently. Against Georgia Tech Fulkerson scored 12 points and grabbed eight boards. At North Carolina, against a bulky front line that included Kennedy Meeks, Isaiah Hicks, and Luke Maye, Fulkerson contributed eight points, four rebounds and two steals as the young Vols nearly pulled off an upset.
This was before Grant Williams—another freshman who was starting alongside Fulkerson—evolved into a two-time Southeastern Conference Player of the Year and first-round draft pick of the Boston Celtics. At the time, Tennessee coaches thought Fulkerson was their best player in a recruiting class that also included Jordan Bone, another future NBA Draft pick.
Even Williams, who turned in a solid rookie year with the Celtics in 2019-20, says, “I don’t know if I would I have been the guy I am now if Fulky hadn’t gotten hurt.”
No one will ever know if that’s true, but a game from last season provided a glimpse of Fulkerson’s talent that all his coaches and teammates knew was there. They’d witnessed it in practice many times.
It was last March at Kentucky’s famed Rupp Arena, where Tennessee is 6-38 in the building’s history. The Vols had endured a difficult season, hampered by the early departure of Williams and Bone to the NBA and then devastated when Bone’s replacement at point guard, Lamonte Turner, declared his career over—after 11 games during which he had led the SEC in assists—because of the lingering effects of a shoulder injury. But they were still battling for an NCAA tournament bid, and Fulkerson, whose game had become more and more dominant as the season progressed, came up with a performance for the ages as Tennessee rallied from 17 points down in the second half to win, 81-73.
Fulkerson was a beast, scoring on mid-range and turnaround jumpers, beating everyone down the floor for transition baskets, tossing in jump hooks, making layups off the pick and roll, and getting fouled, keeping possessions alive with aggressive offensive rebounds. His final tally—27 points on 10-of-15 shooting from the field and 7 of 7 from the free-throw line, six rebounds, and two assists in 39 minutes.
“What he did is one of the great performances I've witnessed,” said Rick Barnes, minutes after racking up his second win at Rupp as Tennessee’s coach. “And he's been like that, really … I go back and I think about the time with Grant [Williams] and all those guys. They used to say, 'Fulky, you're better than all of us.’ ”
Kentucky coach John Calipari, who has coached numerous first-round NBA Draft picks during his time in Lexington, was also impressed with Fulkerson’s onslaught that helped end the Wildcats’ 10-year streak of 129 consecutive victories when they led at halftime.
“He's just gotten better and better,” Calipari said in his postgame press conference. “He works really hard, he fights for everything, and he has a way of getting that shot up and off; I mean, he does. And he scored on Nick [Richards], he scored on Nate [Sestina], he scored on EJ [Montgomery], we tried everybody. We tried trapping, we tried a lot of different things to slow him down, but he was a tough cover for us.”
Lanier was obviously busy with his own team last season, but he watched every second of the Tennessee-Kentucky game. He’d been waiting for years to see Fulkerson dominate a game.
“That,” Lanier says, “was the dude we thought we had when we signed him.”
In between the injury against Lipscomb and that performance against Kentucky lies the story of John Fulkerson’s career at Tennessee.
Finding Fulky
Actually, the story began before Fulkerson—who played two seasons at Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport, Tennessee, and the last two at The Christ School in Arden, North Carolina—ever got to Knoxville. In their first full recruiting class, Barnes and his assistants wanted to put together a foundational group that would help resurrect the program, much like Barnes had done at Texas. The Tennessee coaches hadn’t yet had time to build relationships with four-and five-star prospects, and they weren’t necessarily looking for that kind of talent, anyway.
What they wanted were players who would stay in the program and develop. The number of stars attached to their names by recruiting analysts didn’t matter.
Tennessee first found out about Fulkerson because of his aggressive AAU coach, Kevin Feltner, whose Tennessee Bobcats program based out of Jefferson City, Tennessee isn’t sponsored by one of the big shoe companies but still sends its share of players on to Division I basketball because Feltner is a tireless advocate for them. Feltner sent a tape of Fulkerson, who played three seasons for the Bobcats, to Lanier, who in turn showed the video to Tennessee assistants Chris Ogden and Desmond Oliver. All three agreed they should invite Fulkerson to an Elite Camp the Vols put together in June 2015. Grant Williams would be there. Point guard Devon Dotson, who later starred at Kansas, also attended.
Oliver, previously an assistant at UNC Charlotte, had known about Williams—who played high school basketball at Charlotte’s Providence Day School—for years. He and the other Tennessee coaches were eager to see what Fulkerson could do.
Fulkerson made an immediate impression.
“It must have been the first game,” Oliver says. “I was courtside watching two courts. Fulky put on a show, playing with the same energy he does now—blocking shots, running the court, dunking on people. He faced up and drove it. Me being the newcomer on the staff [Lanier and Ogden had followed Barnes from Texas] not knowing what coach wanted, I went to Rob and said, ‘I don’t know what you guys had at Texas, but I can’t imagine we’re going to find many players better than John who’s not a five star and we have to fight Kentucky and Duke to get.”
Fulkerson’s play wasn’t lost on Ogden, either.
“From the very first time we saw him, he always played with aggression and strength, even though he was skinny at the time,” says Ogden, now the head coach at UT Arlington. “And he had a great knack for snagging loose balls.”
Lanier liked Fulkerson, too, but he was cautious, for a couple of reasons. One, Barnes was out of the country visiting his son and wasn’t at the Elite Camp, and two, Lanier wanted to see what Fulkerson could do against AAU competition.
In Feltner’s mind, Fulkerson had nothing to prove.
“It was so obvious Fulky tore [the Elite Camp] camp up,” Feltner says. “He was by far the best man in the gym that day. And Grant Williams was in that camp. I watched one game where Fulky had 10 dunks. There was nobody in the camp that could handle him.
“I remember talking to Rob after the game. I asked him, ‘What do you think of my guy?’ And Rob says, “I like him, but I want to see more.’ And I said, ‘I’m hearing Grant’s walking out of here with an offer. How can my guy be walking out of this camp without an offer from the University of Tennessee? He’s by far the best player in this camp.’ But Rick wasn’t there. They wanted Rick to see him. Rob said, ‘Felt, we’ll come watch him in July AAU. One of us will be at every game.’ ”
True to Lanier’s word, Barnes attended the Peach State Showcase in Atlanta, Georgia, where Fulkerson and the Tennessee Bobcats were playing. Barnes was sold immediately.
“Coach Barnes has got a tremendous eye for talent,” Oliver says. “It takes him one time to tell if a player has got good feel for the game. Coach saw John and immediately loved him.”
Barnes said as much to Feltner.
“At Augusta, Rick said to me ‘Felt, I want you to know I fell in love with your guy in the layup line,’ ” Feltner says. “I’m offering him a scholarship to the University of Tennessee.”
But it wouldn’t be quite that easy for the Vol staff to sign Fulkerson. A well-kept secret before his final summer of AAU basketball, Fulkerson suddenly became a commodity. He wound up with 50 scholarship offers. And at least one of college basketball’s elite teams was interested.
North Carolina.
UNC assistant coach Hubert Davis had seen Fulkerson play in Augusta and was ready to offer a scholarship on the spot. But he wanted Fulkerson to come to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and work out so head coach Roy Williams could see him. Feltner called Fulkerson and told him the news. Fulkerson’s answer surprised his AAU coach.
“I’m tired,” Fulkerson said. “If they offered a scholarship, I might go down there. But this has been a long process. I don’t want to go and work out for them. They should know who I am by now.”
Fulkerson didn’t go to Chapel Hill.
His final choice from among those 50 scholarship offers came down to a school and coaches that did know who Fulkerson was, and thought he would be an essential building block to a winning program.
“We always thought we were getting a steal in Fulky,” Lanier says. “The motor, the athleticism, and just the relentless style of play. Sort of with reckless abandon and passion, but a true athlete with quickness, explosiveness, and fearlessness.”
It wouldn’t take long for Fulkerson to show all those attributes.
Busting out early
Fulkerson announced his presence to the college basketball world in Hawaii.
That was where, in the 2016 Maui Invitational, the Vols played Oregon and Fulkerson contributed a double-double. One play was an indicator of things to come, though it took a couple of years for Fulkerson to consistently duplicate it.
With 2:44 left in the first half, Fulkerson found himself on the good side of a mismatch, guarded by Oregon’s 6-2 Dylan Ennis, an experienced guard who had begun his career at Villanova and was in his sixth season in college after suffering an injury that limited him to two games in 2015-16. Fulkerson squared up against Ennis on the left side of the lane, pump-faked to get his defender in the air, and drove to the basket, where he threw a shot up and over the Ducks’ menacing 6-9 Al Bell, who went on that season to become Oregon’s all-time leading shot-blocker, the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year and the NCAA Midwest Regional Most Outstanding Player.
(Tennessee Athletics)
“Whoa, what a move by Fulky,” shouted Vol Network color analyst Steve Hamer.
The basket gave Tennessee a 31-23 lead. The Vols eventually lost in overtime, but Fulkerson’s breakout performance earned him a spot in the starting lineup.
To prove that wasn’t a fluke, Fulkerson delivered solid performances against a pair of ACC teams—Georgia Tech and North Carolina—before that fateful collision with Garrison Mathews in the Lipscomb game that forced him to take a medical redshirt after playing in just 10 games.
Tennessee finished 16-16 in Rick Barnes’ second season. How many more wins might the Vols have picked up had Fulkerson stayed healthy? How much better would he have gotten?
“Fulky was dealing back then,” Grant Williams says. “We were super high on him. I was just happy to be playing with him. Both competing at a higher level as freshmen, helping our team win. When he went down, I had to play for my fellow North Carolinian. He never really complained. He never really gave up.”
Fulkerson had every opportunity to give up, because more injury-related misfortune would befall him.
After recovering from the broken wrist and dislocated elbow, Fulkerson, lifting weights in the spring of 2017, suffered a torn labrum. That cost him several more months of valuable strength and conditioning, one-on-one instruction, and team practices. A lesser player might have folded at that point. Both injuries had been suffered while Fulkerson was trying to do the right thing—drawing a charge and getting stronger in the weight room.
What’s a guy have to do to catch a break?
“It took me a while after that,” Fulkerson says. “Even after my body was healthy. The biggest thing for me was getting back mentally. It took a while to play with freedom and play aggressively again. I played really scared and was timid. My body was healthy. It was just mental for me.”
Rob Lanier remembers the struggle Fulkerson had trying to regain the mental edge he showed early in his freshman season.
“It took him a while, and while he was coming back, we had some other guys step up [Williams, Admiral Schofield, Kyle Alexander] and play great,” Lanier says. “Other guys flourished. John was trying to come back from the injury, trying to put on weight, trying to get stronger. Then he gets hurt in the weight room. He had several layers he had to get through, just to get back to where he was.
“He was a starter as a freshman. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t have continued to be. He wasn’t necessarily our hardest worker, but when he got on the floor, he played with a motor.”
Trying to find a role
In 2017-18, his first full season, Fulkerson found himself playing behind Williams, who would go on to earn SEC Player of the Year honors, and Alexander, the mobile, 6-11 Canadian. With Schofield occasionally playing as an undersized four-man, that didn’t leave a lot of opportunity for Fulkerson, who averaged 9.3 minutes, 1.7 points, and 1.6 rebounds.
While Fulkerson struggled to readjust, the Vols took a major step forward, winning the SEC regular-season championship, playing in the SEC Tournament title game, and earning a No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament, where they advanced to the second round and lost, on a last-second shot to Loyola Chicago, which eventually won its way to the Final Four. Tennessee finished 26-9 and spent 14 consecutive weeks in the Associated Press Top 25.
Fulkerson didn’t produce a double-figure scoring or rebounding game the entire season.
“He plays with reckless abandon, and subconsciously, I think he had some reluctance about doing that [after the injuries],” Lanier says. “Being active means putting yourself in harm’s way. He would run through a brick wall. But you can’t think about running through a brick wall. Once that becomes a thought process, reckless goes out the window.”
Fulkerson was more of his old self in his redshirt sophomore season, though he still played in the shadow of Williams, who earned his second consecutive SEC Player of the Year award, consensus first-team All-America honors, and helped lead the Vols to a 31-6 record. Williams and Schofield were first-team All-SEC picks, and point guard Jordan Bone earned second-team honors.
Fulkerson—who averaged 3.1 points, 2.6 rebounds, and 12.1 minutes—occasionally showed glimpses of a return to old form. He recorded his first double-figure scoring game in nearly two years when he notched 11 points against Louisville in late November 2018. Five weeks later, Fulkerson scored 15 points, to go with four rebounds, two blocked shots, and two steals, against Tennessee Tech.
That was the last time he scored in double figures for the season.
The 2019 NBA Draft turned out to be a tipping point for Fulkerson. Williams decided to turn professional after his junior season and was taken in the first round by the Boston Celtics. Bone left early, too, and was drafted by the Detroit Pistons late in the second round. Schofield, who graduated, was also drafted—in the second round by the Washington Wizards—and Alexander, another senior, eventually signed a two-way contract with the Miami Heat. With experience, leadership, and players who could score from the post position in short supply, Fulkerson needed to step up.
He spent the summer of 2019 preparing to assume a role not unlike the one he had earned and then had taken away from him three years before.
“We all remember Fulky’s freshman year,” Barnes told Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook for its preview of Tennessee’s 2019-20 season. “He’s getting back there now. What happened to him, he just said [playing behind Alexander and Williams] is going to be my role. I used to get on him about it every day. ‘Man, why don’t you want to beat out Grant?’ He just accepted that role.
“Now, he knows he better play or these freshmen [Olivier Nkamhoua, Uros Plavsic, Drew Pember] are going to pass him by.”
Barnes needn’t have worried.
The re-emergence
The story of Tennessee’s 2019-20 season was anything but linear, its trajectory buffeted about by injuries, NCAA eligibility appeals, the December addition of point guard Santiago Vescovi, and the emergence of two players who hadn’t been needed to contribute a great deal the previous two years. One was Yves Pons, who blossomed into the SEC Defensive Player of the Year, tied a school single-season record for blocked shots, and quintupled his sophomore season scoring average.
The other was John Fulkerson.
Pons burst from the starting blocks—averaging 15 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 2.8 blocks in his first four games—and stayed consistent throughout the season. Fulkerson scored in double figures more times in his first 11 games—eight—than he had in his first two and a third seasons, but it took him a while to hit his stride.
(Tennessee Athletics)
After a six-point effort that including 2-of-9 shooting against Mississippi State on Feb. 1, Fulkerson proceeded to rough up the SEC. His first career 20-point plus game came at Alabama, where he made 8 of 9 shots en route to 22 points. He scored 25 against South Carolina, and then, in consecutive games, 22 against Florida and 27 at Kentucky. In both games, he was 10 of 15 from the field.
Fulkerson closed out his season with 19 points in a loss to Auburn and wound up earning second-team All-SEC honors from the league’s coaches.
“It took him a long time to figure it out,” Barnes says. “But you know what? He finally did. At the end of last year, we had to turn and play through him. And he was terrific.”
Barnes had poked and prodded Fulkerson the previous three years, trying to extract that kind of performance from him. Last year, it was imperative Fulkerson deliver. Barnes’ advice to the big man was simple.
“The biggest thing he told me was to make the right play,” Fulkerson says. “Don’t try to make the home run play. Don’t try to force it. Make the easy play. If you’re getting double-teamed, somebody’s open. If they play off you and give you the jump shot, take the jump shot. You’re going to see a lot of different things thrown at you, and you’re just going to have to read them and make the right play, whether it’s a pass, a shot, or a play off the dribble.”
That Fulkerson finally began to deliver surprised no one who knows him, least of all his former roommate Grant Williams.
“We all knew what his potential and talent was from the jump, especially prior to his injury,” Williams says. “That was always Fulky. In high school, I was more a role player—a rebounding, garbage-basket guy. Fulky could shot fake and score off the glass. He was more comfortable facing the basket. He expanded his game and was able to play with his back to the basket, but he still had the ability to elevate and rise over guys. And he’s always been the frantic, flying-around, energy guy on defense.
“All of us knew Fulky had it in him. In practice, he had this legendary, left-handed tomahawk dunk. It was a sight to see. You don’t expect him to be able to go through you like he does, but he’s so long. If you look back at practice film, you can find two or three of those tomahawk dunks on me.”
Part of Fulkerson’s improved play had to do with his improved work habits.
“If you’d ranked our team from hardest worker to the least, Admiral would have been at the top,” Rob Lanier says. “And you could have mentioned a few more guys until you got to Fulky.”
Tennessee assistant Desmond Oliver thinks Fulkerson wasn’t as convinced he was as good a player as his coaches thought.
“I don’t think in a million years he thought he could become the player he is right now,” Oliver says. “When he was here early on, we tried to get the guys into the gym. Schofield was coming in here five times a day in the offseason, and Grant was following in his footsteps. Jordan Bowden and Jordan Bone, too. Fulky didn’t want to come back after our mandatory stuff.
“It’s different now. He’s working harder. He’s more dominant. He had a day last week in practice that was the most dominant offensive performance I’ve ever seen. He scored in every way. Pull up jumper, got to the basket. Faced up with a high release. He did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted—in every drill.”
In his final season, Fulkerson, always deferential to his teammates, could become the man, despite the fact Barnes has his deepest, most talented roster in his Tennessee tenure. He’s already earned preseason first-team All-SEC honors from Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook and other publications. Fulkerson is also on the 20-player Karl Malone Power Forward of the Year Award watch list.
“He’s not going to defer to anyone anymore,” Tennessee assistant Michael Schwartz says. “He wants to take a leadership role. He’ll go above and beyond, whether he’s asked to do something or not. There was never anything negative about John prior. He always did what you asked him to do and with the utmost effort.
“But now his mindset has changed. He’s thinking about team goals, about individual goals, and goals for his future in this game, beyond Tennessee.”
The next level?
Barnes has proven over and over again in his career that he can take a recruit who was underestimated by analysts and turn them into major contributors at the college level and, eventually, NBA players. Some believe Fulkerson could be Barnes’ next player to move to the game’s highest level. Two coaches interviewed for this story compared him to Bobby Jones, who starred for North Carolina in the early 1970s and later, the Philadelphia 76ers.
"Bobby Jones gives you two hours of his blood, showers and goes home," former 76ers general manager Pat Williams once told NBA Today. "If I was going to ask a youngster to model after someone, I would pick Bobby Jones."
Several years ago, Jones’ 76ers teammate, the legendary Julius Erving, said of Jones: "He's a player who's totally selfless, who runs like a deer, jumps like a gazelle, plays with his head and heart each night, and then walks away from the court as if nothing happened."
Sounds a lot like John Fulkerson.
Fulkerson as NBA prospect isn’t a revolutionary concept for his former AAU coach, Kevin Feltner. As far back as Fulkerson’s second season with the Tennessee Bobcats, Feltner predicted Fulkerson would wind up in the NBA.
“I looked John straight in the eye,” Feltner says. “Mike and Ramona, his mom and dad, were there, too. And I said, ‘John, if you develop pro work habits from this point forward, you’re going to play in the NBA.’ Both of John’s parents played college basketball. Ramona was very tenacious and scrappy. John gets his motor from his mom, and size and length from his dad. They’re knowledgeable in the game. And they looked at me like I was crazy. I said, ‘Guys, you will understand one day what I’m telling you.’ ”
That day is getting closer and closer, though because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCAA has granted winter sports athletes another year of eligibility. The possibility exists Fulkerson could return to Knoxville for a sixth season.
“I think he knows right now he’s good enough to play in the NBA,” Oliver says. “He knows he’s good enough to lead us to the national championship. Now he’s coming into the gym like Grant and Schofield did. He’s adopted those guys’ work habits. And they both made it to the league.”
If Fulkerson does get that far, he’ll give a lot of credit to Barnes.
“He’s always pushing us to get better,” Fulkerson says. “My relationship with coach is very strong. We’re talking all the time about what’s going to work, and what’s not. Coach is really, really serious on the court. All locked in. Off the court, he’s a fun person to be around, making jokes, cutting up. He wants you to be the best basketball player you can be. He wants you to reach your full potential. He wants to set you up for success after you leave this program.
“I’m going to work as hard as I can and see where this season takes me. I’ll evaluate things after the season. This year doesn’t count. I have the option to come back. I haven’t really thought about that. I’m just going to go to work each day.”
Fulky the stand-up guy
It’s well within the realm of possibility Fulkerson can follow Williams, Schofield, Bone, and Alexander to the NBA. But even if he doesn’t, he’s already secured his place in Tennessee basketball history as one of the fans’ all-time favorite Vols. He’s always front and center when the team visits hospitals, or last March, tornado victims in middle Tennessee. The Tennessee video crew knows it has a go-to on-camera personality for the clips it circulates on social media.
“He’s a goofball,” Williams says. “I don’t know if he takes a single thing seriously. He’s a super kind-hearted country boy who was surrounded his whole life by a lot of great people, and it rubbed off on him. He tries to make everyone smile and be happy and never tries to hurt anyone.”
Despite Fulkerson’s travails, he’s remained upbeat and positive throughout his career.
“He’s a great, great kid,” Oliver says. “He’s never had a bad day. I can’t think of one day where I’ve come to practice and gotten on Fulky or gotten on him in general and he gave me attitude. That’s unique. Even Grant had a couple of bad days where he didn’t want to be bothered. Fulky’s never had one day, where he had a test or something, or he didn’t get enough sleep and was grouchy or didn’t want to be dealt with.
“John’s a special player. He’s a Tennessee guy. In recruiting we talk about local kids. Keon [Johnson, a five-star freshman from Shelbyville, Tennessee] is here. Jordan Bowden was from Knoxville. So is Drew Pember. Jordan Bone was from Nashville. We’re recruiting locally. That’s the sell. You want to have a career like Fulkerson is having, even if it lasts just one or two years. People will never forget him.
“I think he’ll have as much respect as anyone who ever played here.”
Barnes has been hard on Fulkerson, but from the first day he laid eyes on him, in that AAU tournament in Georgia, he knew Fulkerson could be special. Had that collision with Lipscomb’s Garrison Mathews never happened, maybe Fulkerson’s time would have come sooner. Or maybe Fulkerson has traveled the road he was meant to travel. It’s been a rough ride at times, but the final destination could be worth the wait.
“Sometimes it just takes guys longer than others,” Barnes says. “Almost every player you ever coach, when they leave and it doesn’t work out, you say, ‘I just wish I knew then what I know now.’ But I always tell them that window [of opportunity] closes a little bit every day. When that opportunity comes, you better be ready. Fulky’s time has come, and it’s been great to see.
“People love him. He’d give you the shirt off his back. He’s never given us any trouble, and if you knew his family, you’d know that’s never going to happen. All I’d have to do is call his mom and dad. They’d take care of him. The kid has no sense of entitlement. He’s real. He’s authentic; just so comfortable in his own skin. Fulky is definitely comfortable with who he is. That goes back to the way he was raised. Basketball is important to him. He realizes he’s got a chance to do something special with it. But it’s not what defines him.”
Fulkerson has embraced his role as a leader. When Santiago Vescovi, who’s from Uruguay but had played in Australia before signing with the Vols, arrived in Knoxville last December, Fulkerson was one of the first Vols to welcome him.
“We got really close right away,” Vescovi says. “From the first, we had a lot of chemistry. At first, it was on the court. He was a center and I was playing the point. We had to talk a lot in practice. But he’s a really good guy. He knew I was new here. I found out my first day of practice he was somebody you’d want to be friends with.
“I didn’t see much of him before I got here. I can’t compare him to what he was before. But since I got here, he’s grown. He’s the type of player I want to play with. He’s not selfish. Every time we give him the ball in the post, we know he’s going to do the right thing. It’s either take a shot, which most likely he’s going to make. Or if he gets two people on him, he’s going to kick it out.
“Lately I’ve been watching him a lot. I’ve realized how good a leader he is. On the court. Off the court. If it’s some kind of activity, he’s taking care of it. Before practice he talks to us. He knows if we need to get a little lower or a little hyped. As the oldest player here, he’s doing a really good job.”
The last word on Fulkerson belongs to Rob Lanier, the former Tennessee assistant who was the first on the staff to see Fulkerson on tape. Lanier thinks Fulkerson’s career has gone just the way it was supposed to go.
“It winds up being a great experience for John, and great for the program,” Lanier says. “John and his family are the kind of people you just root for. They’re kind and humble. They’ve been all in with the way Rick has coached and pushed him from day one.
“He’s an unbelievable representative of that program and that institution.”
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Also, be sure to pre-order the 40th-anniversary edition of the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook for the 2020-21 season.