2024-2025 Regular Season Game 48: Orlando Magic (24-23) at Miami Heat (22-22) - 7:30pm

[Blue_and_Whte]

Saying Franz is best Magic player isn't hot take

He is. He just does not have pedigree of first overall pick, isn't American and isn't glorified as best thing to arrive to draft years prior to a draft.

Franz is one of our best defenders and on offense he is at worst up to par with Banchero, often more efficient.

Banchero had good playoff series in very favorable matchup vs Cavs after Allen got hurt. Before that, over 3 games, his TS was 52% in playoffs, going i believe around 1-12 in direct isolations vs Mobley.

BUT once Allen got hurt, after already losing Wade, Cavs had no backup PF nor C left, Mobley slided back to PF, leaving Banchero to be guarded by 6'5 Okoro, chubby Niang or fringe nba players like Thompson & Morris ( Morris is no longer in nba).

Naturally, he ended up having great series after.

I often disagreed with Knightro this year who kept repeating offense will be fine because Paolo will/is taking massive leap, on very small sample.
Even in 5 games sample, his TS% was below 54% in 4 games, but inflated due 50 points game.

Banchero's game is basically playing Randle/ Derozan type player. Baiting for fouls and taking mid range shots and being ball stopper. When they go in everything looks great, when they don't, it doesn't. He is just taller than Derozan and more skilled than Randle so some things come easier.

But imo, main problem for Magic offense is how uninvolved rest of a players are in offense. Franz & Paolo manipulate & hold ball for so much that rest of a team falls into catch & shoot category, despite fact majority of them aren't actually good at it.
according to tracking, PB & FW hold ball near 11 seconds per possession. Given average length of possession is around 14,4 sec, it means rest of a team hardly ever touches the ball, let alone has time to do anything meaningful with it.

The Euro bias is strong with this one

Not being American has zero to do with anything. I’m not on either bus, just please someone turn into a elite player and improve the supporting cast.

[SOUL]

Yeah...I'd just love to see Paolo or Franz get a couple of easy baskets off of a drawn up play and then repeat until they adjust...It's still just iso, maybe call for a pick or handoff and start over. It's beating a dead horse talking about it here everyday...but even more so watching them do it every game. I feel sorry for those guys..."go do something" has got to be frustrating as heck, even when it goes in.

Just wanting easy baskets can be said for every team in the league. So much hand-wringing about Mose not being a great offensive mind, yet what was Spo getting the entire game? 30 foot prayer shots the last four minutes to come back basically. They won by putting big bodies on everyone and we couldn't get spacing anywhere. Far cry from 42 point 4th quarter in the Detroit game. Even when Miami scored at the end, it was from broken plays (Paolo butterfingers) or Herro lobbing it to players since Herro can actually dribble drive and is a threat to shoot as well.

Fact is, when your team is LED by two below average three point shooting forwards surrounded by a lot of non-threats and no real guards, that work best from iso.. that's where they score. Free throws and isos.

Just like we went from scoring 90 to 110-120 a game now from getting guys back, now we want easy baskets but we're going to start actually needing the personnel for it. Looked fine when they missed and Franz and Paolo went driving to the basket to collapse the defenses or score from an advantageous position, but we are entirely capped as a half-court team until we get more perimeter threats out there. Only so much you can do out there to disrupt good defensive teams in half-court with 4/5 players most of the time being cheated off of on the perimeter.