new season 2019: Is Magic done with tanking?

[Knightro]

How Weltman and Hammond shape this roster over the next couple of months should be a big time indicator of if they expect to win 20-25 or expect to win 35-40.

If they dump veteran players like Vucevic, Ross, Augustin and Fournier for minimal/youthful return, then it might not matter if they WANT to win.

If they keep their veterans and add more of them...

[Last Guardian]

Why do people say we tank? We are just bad.

[WeAreVenom]

How the hell does that fix tanking?

I don't think it will.....I don't know if tanking is avoidable tbh....

[PennytoShaq]

Not sure if we will tank now, which is a shame. BUT, with the new lotto odds, we can easily do the 25 win thing and have much higher odds of landing a top 3 pick.

In fact I think that really sucking it up and bottoming out basically could still mean you could pick 7 or 8..I haven't looked at the odds yet, I wish they were in place for this lottery that just occurred.

[TDJacksonville]

if the rotoworld report of us taking things slow with Issac is true then we probably tanking. hes probably one of the top 5 talents on this craptastic roster.

[Optimus_Steel]

Why do people say we tank? We are just bad.

Exactly. We won't have a choice, they will just be bad because well they lack talent.

[thelead]

Why do people say we tank? We are just bad.

Mostly but I believe, even this year, injuries were drawn out longer than they should be. Could be 'tanking' or it could be bad trainers/doctors but it was a bit unusual this year.

[NBAchamps2017]

That’s the problem with this team, they don’t tank at all. They are all delusional that the team is enough to make it to no. 8 or 7th. The truth is; they suck! They are bunch of losers mixed up in a casserole hoping to create a nice dish. If these players still here next season i’m OUTTA HERE!

Gordon
Fournier
Vucevic

(Payton’s gone. Thank you WeHam)

[Skybox]

That’s the problem with this team, they don’t tank at all. They are all delusional that the team is enough to make it to no. 8 or 7th. The truth is; they suck! They are bunch of losers mixed up in a casserole hoping to create a nice dish. If these players still here next season i’m OUTTA HERE!

Gordon
Fournier
Vucevic
Mack
(Payton’s gone. Thank you WeHam)

Why wait?

[NBAchamps2017]

That’s the problem with this team, they don’t tank at all. They are all delusional that the team is enough to make it to no. 8 or 7th. The truth is; they suck! They are bunch of losers mixed up in a casserole hoping to create a nice dish. If these players still here next season i’m OUTTA HERE!

Gordon
Fournier
Vucevic

(Payton’s gone. Thank you WeHam)

Why wait?

See if WeHam has Hennigan's DNA or not. Dumping Payton for a bag of chips and hiring a 60 year old coach makes me wait a little longer. This is their summer of shaking things up.

[marcush]

Feel free to tell me to get lost but....I dont recall Orlando ever really tanking.

Real tanking is trading your vets for draft picks, not signing FAs for multiple years and whoring out your cap space for more picks.

Fake tanking is signing middling FAs, then going into the season hoping to compete, only to give up after 2 months. Unfortunately, by then everyone else has the same idea and bang....your out of the top 3.

[j-ragg]

Feel free to tell me to get lost but....I dont recall Orlando ever really tanking.

Real tanking is trading your vets for draft picks, not signing FAs for multiple years and whoring out your cap space for more picks.

Fake tanking is signing middling FAs, then going into the season hoping to compete, only to give up after 2 months. Unfortunately, by then everyone else has the same idea and bang....your out of the top 3.

No we never really did. Just kept giving the ball to the same borderline starters instead of seeing what we had with our young talent.

Lotto screwed us to an extent but we screwed ourselves. Now we're on the fast track to 33 wins for the foreseeable future. Want to switch places?

[marcush]

Feel free to tell me to get lost but....I dont recall Orlando ever really tanking.

Real tanking is trading your vets for draft picks, not signing FAs for multiple years and whoring out your cap space for more picks.

Fake tanking is signing middling FAs, then going into the season hoping to compete, only to give up after 2 months. Unfortunately, by then everyone else has the same idea and bang....your out of the top 3.

No we never really did. Just kept giving the ball to the same borderline starters instead of seeing what we had with our young talent.

Lotto screwed us to an extent but we screwed ourselves. Now we're on the fast track to 33 wins for the foreseeable future. Want to switch places?

Well....even when you real tank, it doesn't stop disasters from happening. Like your players tanking their own jump shots and your GM spending all waking hours on twitter spreading confidential information.

And to be honest....there's probably about another 10 examples of what has gone horribly wrong by playing the system the way we did. But we have Simmons, Embiid and a good coach, so I shouldn't be complaining.

[Skybox]

Feel free to tell me to get lost but....I dont recall Orlando ever really tanking.

Real tanking is trading your vets for draft picks, not signing FAs for multiple years and whoring out your cap space for more picks.

Fake tanking is signing middling FAs, then going into the season hoping to compete, only to give up after 2 months. Unfortunately, by then everyone else has the same idea and bang....your out of the top 3.

No we never really did. Just kept giving the ball to the same borderline starters instead of seeing what we had with our young talent.

Lotto screwed us to an extent but we screwed ourselves. Now we're on the fast track to 33 wins for the foreseeable future. Want to switch places?

Well....even when you real tank, it doesn't stop disasters from happening. Like your players tanking their own jump shots and your GM spending all waking hours on twitter spreading confidential information.

And to be honest....there's probably about another 10 examples of what has gone horribly wrong by playing the system the way we did. But we have Simmons, Embiid and a good coach, so I shouldn't be complaining.

I appreciate the fair analysis. You guys are in great shape. Congratulations! Some people think it's an easy path. You guys had some incredible luck with 4 redshirts that kept you down in the wins to feed the tank, a couple of wasted high picks that netted you little in Okafor and Noel, and great luck with fully recovered (knock on wood) season-ending injuries on critical guys. You're now in a great position with cap room, shrewd veteran signings, great young players and another high pick...It's a "Process" that may never be duplicated despite what ORL fans want to do. It's hard to draft high picks and continue to get high picks-PHI did it with injuries.

You guys and BOS took different paths to become the favorites in the East for the next decade. THE PROCESS appears to be an amazing success but please tell everyone else not to count on replicating it

[RickB-Orlando]

Why do people say we tank? We are just bad.

Mostly but I believe, even this year, injuries were drawn out longer than they should be. Could be 'tanking' or it could be bad trainers/doctors but it was a bit unusual this year.

Which is likely why we dumped the entire training staff.

[RickB-Orlando]

That’s the problem with this team, they don’t tank at all. They are all delusional that the team is enough to make it to no. 8 or 7th. The truth is; they suck! They are bunch of losers mixed up in a casserole hoping to create a nice dish. If these players still here next season i’m OUTTA HERE!

Gordon
Fournier
Vucevic

(Payton’s gone. Thank you WeHam)

Why wait?

See if WeHam has Hennigan's DNA or not. Dumping Payton for a bag of chips and hiring a 60 year old coach makes me wait a little longer. This is their summer of shaking things up.

Well, he's 56, but I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

[RickB-Orlando]

Feel free to tell me to get lost but....I dont recall Orlando ever really tanking.

Real tanking is trading your vets for draft picks, not signing FAs for multiple years and whoring out your cap space for more picks.

Fake tanking is signing middling FAs, then going into the season hoping to compete, only to give up after 2 months. Unfortunately, by then everyone else has the same idea and bang....your out of the top 3.

I would say the only year we really tanked was the year prior to the Oladipo draft - which was a very weak draft anyway.

[NBAchamps2017]

Why wait?

See if WeHam has Hennigan's DNA or not. Dumping Payton for a bag of chips and hiring a 60 year old coach makes me wait a little longer. This is their summer of shaking things up.

Well, he's 56, but I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

I am reading this move of hiring an older coach shifted the Magic’s strategy of rebuilding: from ‘thru the draft’ to ‘thru young vet’. No more ‘organic’ rebuilding that takes 5+years. This will be a win now process.

If they hired guys like Sampson, Izzo, Borrego etc then it will be another cycle of Jacque Vaughn rehashed.

[MagicMadness]

Why do people say we tank? We are just bad.

Most of it is us being bad, but once it's obvious we're out of the playoff race, we usually start benching guys for small injuries and what not.

...And then Vogel likes to win the last game of the season and drop us a spot, but that's a different story.

[Mike1989]

if the rotoworld report of us taking things slow with Issac is true then we probably tanking. hes probably one of the top 5 talents on this craptastic roster.

Not necessarily. We can still take it slow with Isaac and become competitive because all you do is make sure he is surrounded by players in the line up that cover any shortcomings he currently has. Also you adjust your expectations so rather than expect 20 a night from him, see if he can get to double figures on a consistent basis; rather than expect lights out three point shooting, see if he can hit the same or better 3 point percentage than last season; and on defense rather than expect all-NBA, see if he can become a plus at that end. That is showing patience with him and giving him the opportunity to develop without putting high expectations on him.

Sure we could decide to build around Isaac and this year's 6th pick, but we can't go and extend Aaron Gordon to a max contract and expect him to be happy with waiting another 'x' amount of seasons before we try and get better and win. Gordon will want to win more games next season and make a push for the play offs, I suspect we'll have other veterans wanting the same, and our head coach doesn't strike me as a guy that will want to tank. So for me if we do extend Gordon and don't trade him, that is one sign that we intend to try and win more games next season because if we intend to tank we might as well sign-and-trade him because guys like Isaac and possibly Bamba/JJJ if we go that way are a couple seasons behind polishing their games to contribute enough to support him and win games. So if we tank, trade anyone with value and go with Augustin, Mack, Iwundu, Isaac, Biyombo, Birch, and our draft picks. That way we should tank properly because we won't be good enough to win many games. Keep the veterans around and we'll do what we've done in recent seasons and that's play ourselves out of better lottery odds.

With that said, I think we'll try to boost ourselves in the 30-41 win count range next season. Had we gone with a younger and more inexperienced coach that might have suggested tanking and patient building around young talent. In Steve Clifford he played to win games in Charlotte even last season when they didn't look like making the play offs they played to wins, so I'd expect him to promote the same here.