Game Thread 24: Orlando Magic (10-13) @ Charlotte Hornets (13-9) 12/9 7PM ET

[FFBlitzace]

I know I shouldn't aggressively dislike a player. We all want the same thing, which is to win, and that means we want our players to be good. So I do want Fournier to be good. But there's a side of me that's a little upset that his box score shows what appears to be a decent shooting night (if at low volume). In reality, Charlotte was more than happy to let him pound the f*** out of the ball and go nowhere. 0 assists and an astonishing -30 in 24 minutes. I don't like this guy. Maybe that's unfair, since he has no business being the focal point of an offense, and thus he's exposed every single night for his inability to be the focal point of an offense. But still, I can't help it, I'm just tired of this guy. Him and Vuc. I've seen the Magic lose a crap ton of games over the past 5 years in which Nikola Vucevic has participated. Which again might not be fair, but that's just how it makes me feel. He had me going there for a few games with some really good defense, but he's right back at it now with his old soft tricks.

I realize that pretty much everyone was bad tonight. I'm just ranting.

[pepe1991]

Only reason why Biyombo isn't worst singing of 2016 FA is simple. Noah and Parsons menaged to look even worst.
Dude is completely average at rebounding, gives you some blocks but it's not like he is Whiteside outthere. On other side he has stone hands, has top 10 highest turnover ratio among not only Cs but Cs and PFs. All his advanced stats make him bottom 5 worst, least productive C this season.
He is not ONLY reason why we are medicore, but when you put things in perspective, team is paying him and Green togeter $32M .

Should I even talk about Jeff Green? He is 2 -10 in last 2 games, he is one of worst defenders in whole league and he can't hit water from a boat but because of his salary he can't be DNPed. Rudež literally smokes him in every single basketball category, but heeey, gotta put 15% of your salary in body of washed up dude on the floor no matter what.

[FFBlitzace]

I'm glad that Rudez and Meeks got all of our shots in garbage time. Quality use of those minutes.

"But Mario wasn't giving any effort. I'm pretty sure I saw him sit down on the floor and pull out his 3DS to play Pokemon Sun and Moon at one point ffs."

Yeah yeah.

Wait, are you telling me he stopped playing Pokemon as well? Half assing all the time. That damn kid can't commit to anything.

AND, it wasn't even the New 3DS, it was a beat to s*** launch model. Kid's a cheapass in addition to an awful basketball player.

[Magic_Kingdom]

Mario is shooting .306 FG%, and .172 3PT%. It's hard to justify making sure you get him playing time and shots when that is the output.

And while we may disagree about whether Mario is giving full effort, it seems pretty clear there is more to his being benched than his shooting percentage. There were reports of him having attitude issues before the Magic drafted him.

But at some point, if the player is good enough, the coach won't be able to keep him off the court. That's not happening with Mario. He looks mediocre or worse when he gets in games.

[NEM]

If we can't hold teams to under 100, it's basically an automatic loss for us.

Anything over 95 and we will likely lose... this team is so flawed and has been all season. Once teams decide to actually try on defense against us, we are ****... that was obvious the other night against Boston. I'm at work tonight so I couldn't watch the game, but that's what it looks like happened again..

[Dennis Reynolds]

I'm glad that Rudez and Meeks got all of our shots in garbage time. Quality use of those minutes.

"But Mario wasn't giving any effort. I'm pretty sure I saw him sit down on the floor and pull out his 3DS to play Pokemon Sun and Moon at one point ffs."

Yeah yeah.

Wait, are you telling me he stopped playing Pokemon as well? Half assing all the time. That damn kid can't commit to anything.

AND, it wasn't even the New 3DS, it was a beat to s*** launch model. Kid's a cheapass in addition to an awful basketball player.

So true. Thank God we have Jeff Green!

[FFBlitzace]

We heard a lot of things about Mario before the draft. Even before his struggles set in, we never saw this guy with unlimited swagger that he was reported to be. Reports were overblown. So I don't really take into consideration any of that stuff.

He's never stepped out of line in an interview and complained about anything, to my knowledge. He's always just talking about how he needs to improve. And nobody has spoken out about him being an attitude problem. Doesn't mean they can't simply be keeping it in-house, but I just don't see any evidence of it. The supposed lack of effort in games is also being overblown. It's great that guys like Bo Outlaw come in during garbage time and dive into the stands, but most players basically coast and chuck. I'm not making excuses, I'm just being real. I haven't seen anything out of him that I would consider to be straight dogging it. I think the situation is as simple as him being a struggling young player not getting minutes on a team that wants to try to make the playoffs.

[pepe1991]

So here we go again? Team lost to yet another blow out . Evan fournier has +/- of -30 in 24 min (?! how? ) Dude gets gets destroyed on defense. Our starters got blown out of building and yet only topic is Hezonja and his 8 min of garbage time.

Biggest problem, with Mario stats this year is sample size that , if you count all min in 48 min basketball comes to fact that he played 3 total games and 2 quaters over 2 months of basketball so our sample size is literally non existing. FOr example, Mario in 24 games has 160 min , Meeks in 5 already has 85.
Sample size is so thin, that for example, if he makes 5 threes in a row , his 3point shooting will go from 19% rightn now to 32% . Same with his overall FG%, from 30%, if he makes 5 shots in a row to 35%. 10 shots would put hi on 39% FG.
He literally can have 3 good games in a row and go back to 40%+ FG and 30%+ for 3 .

[Dennis Reynolds]

Mario is shooting .306 FG%, and .172 3PT%. It's hard to justify making sure you get him playing time and shots when that is the output.

And while we may disagree about whether Mario is giving full effort, it seems pretty clear there is more to his being benched than his shooting percentage. There were reports of him having attitude issues before the Magic drafted him.

But at some point, if the player is good enough, the coach won't be able to keep him off the court. That's not happening with Mario. He looks mediocre or worse when he gets in games.

You do know players go through slumps, right? Even if this isn't just an ordinary slump and Mario's gotten way worse this year, there's no way he's gotten this bad. At some point law of averages will prevail which means he's going to go on a hot streak at some point.

[ChosenSavior]

Remember 2 games ago when everyone was telling us "negative nancies" "I told you so?"

I won't stoop to that level

Don't be that guy bro. These losses hurt enough already.

[Dennis Reynolds]

Remember 2 games ago when everyone was telling us "negative nancies" "I told you so?"

I won't stoop to that level

Don't be that guy bro. These losses hurt enough already.

"ChosenSavior"

Are you Meeks?

[Rumncoke25]

I missed the game thank god for overtime! I'm sorry for those fans who still hurt over the losses. Full disclosures I quit before the season started. I thought we would win 35 games this year, too much experimentation.

But again I think a lot of fans want years of losing to stop, so badly that hey want to WILL this team to being better than they are, WISH player x to be a star in the making. Let's be honest, who on this team would be option b on a good team? Hell, who other than Ibaka would be an option C?

Sorry for the rant, but at some point we have to come to grips that the team is built wrong, the players have been drafted wrong, the free agents signed wrong, and we have to do something else. Not a knee jerk trade either, I mean overhaul. The pain isn't over Magic fans, but we have to get through this to get to the other side.

[OrlandoDream]

Missed this one. Will someone who isn't on their post-blowout emotional stage explain what happened? We were only down by y at the half. I know Hornets are a good team but damn. Last two games we've lost by 50 points.....Not good.

[NEM]

Remember 2 games ago when everyone was telling us "negative nancies" "I told you so?"

I won't stoop to that level

Don't be that guy bro. These losses hurt enough already.

I'm just saying... people were so quick to say "I told you so" after a 5 game sample... the team was playing over their heads during that time, and they have come right back down to earth. I just don't understand how some on here continue to defend Hennigan when he has built a perennial lottery team in the 5 years he's been here... can you honestly sit there and see and end to all of this, because I sure as hell cant.

[OrlandO]

Missed this one. Will someone who isn't on their post-blowout emotional stage explain what happened? We were only down by y at the half. I know Hornets are a good team but damn. Last two games we've lost by 50 points.....Not good.

Didn't play defense after the first quarter, kept giving up offensive rebounds that led to 3s, and we were bricking too many shots to keep up with their offense. Pretty much sums it up. Also, Biz hurt his shoulder and Vuc hurt his back in the 3rd quarter. Both guys had to go back to the locker room and were diagnosed with soreness, so possible we will be shorthanded tomorrow.

[OrlandoDream]

Missed this one. Will someone who isn't on their post-blowout emotional stage explain what happened? We were only down by y at the half. I know Hornets are a good team but damn. Last two games we've lost by 50 points.....Not good.

Didn't play defense after the first quarter, kept giving up offensive rebounds that led to 3s, and we were bricking too many shots to keep up with their offense. Pretty much sums it up. Also, Biz hurt his shoulder and Vuc hurt his back in the 3rd quarter. Both guys had to go back to the locker room and were diagnosed with soreness, so possible we will be shorthanded tomorrow.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Hope it's nothing serious. If Biz goes down, so does our defense. I think it might be time to call back the BigZimm.

[Bensational]

Remember 2 games ago when everyone was telling us "negative nancies" "I told you so?"

I won't stoop to that level

Was that about the same time you started a Praise Thread?

I'm not supporting I told you so's either, from either perspective.

I missed the first half but the sad thing is I couldn't even see any positives to take away from what I saw. The team just seems to have taken their foot off the gas on all levels. Hopefully they find the motivation to turn it back on soon.

[Bensational]

Wow, Mario has become a real hot button topic.

Only people talking about Mario in this thread are people complaining about phantom Mario complaints. Nobody cared about him tonight, except one person, so why so defensive?

His on ball defense was fine. Off ball, he just stood several feet off his guy and ball watched.

Is someone going to make the case that we lost this game because Mario didn't get his minutes? Because he wasn't lighting it up on the court, either. Sure, it would be more beneficial to see him taking garbage time shots over Meeks and Rudez, but for whatever reason he didn't.

Mario just isn't a good basketball player right now. He struggles in garbage time against garbage time players. He's not a factor for us this season so let's just let him quietly develop and stop trying to pick fights about the inequalities of it all.

[Optimus_Steel]

So we suck again?

Sent from my SM-N920V using RealGM mobile app

[OrlandO]

This team is going to be up and down all season. I wouldn't be surprised if we lost to denver and then beat atlanta and LAC (unless our bigs are out, then we're just screwed).