Official Speculation Thread ‘17-18’: XVIII: The Long Wait Continues

[MagicFan101]

*** Alright posters and posterettes, let's keep U.S. politics out of this. ***

This one was funny though:



But that's enough. Keep the discussion on basketball or whatever it is you crazy kids talk about in here.

Pass.

Educating others on any topic THEY choose to bring up is a part of any forum.

Thanks though.

You must have me mistaken with someone else. Do it again and you're gone.

And I like you. Don't do it.

You must have me mistakes with the regular here who uses political attacks in their tag and turns any opinion they disagree with into cause for labeling someone a “bleeding Dem.”

If you want these conversations gone you will need to go to the source.

You’re welcome.

[rcklsscognition]

Some good, albeit expected, news.

Read on Twitter

[MagicMadness]

You must have me mistakes with the regular here who uses political attacks in their tag and turns any opinion they disagree with into cause for labeling someone a “bleeding Dem.”

If you want these conversations gone you will need to go to the source.

You’re welcome.

If you see a problematic off-topic post, or personal attack - report it.

[MagicFan101]

Some good, albeit expected, news.

Read on Twitter

Good to see there isn’t another Hezonja scenario on the way.

[SOUL]

never proclaimed him to be a star or somebody that is the answer at that point.

Nobody that defended Payton ever said anything about "greatness".

If each of you wants to claim that you never personally described Payton as a future star or "answer at the point," I'm not going to call you guys liars, but it seems unquestionable to me that many people on this board made claims of that nature during Payton's first two years with the Magic. It seems to me that I remember polls in which many, many people rated him as a future star or at least our long-term PG of the future. And I also think I remember people posting predictions about Payton's future greatness on the General Board, getting flamed for it, and then coming back to the Magic board and defending themselves. If you want to proclaim your own innocence, fine, but that "nobody ever said" stuff is transparently false.

And you kind of proved my point, Harkless/KOQ/Payton got signed and are playing on better teams where they're expected to play their role and contribute 18-28 minutes a game to help impact their team, because they've shown they can be helpful role players with the minutes they got here. Jones was a scrub, and Nicholson kind of got screwed a little bit because when he was at his most comfortable offensively, we would jerk his minutes around.

This most certainly does not prove your point. Harkless only appeared in two playoff games last year, getting benched when it mattered most because his coach didn't think he was helping the team. The consensus around the league now is that Portland has failed to put any kind of decent supporting cast around its star backcourt. KOQ has averaged basically the same minutes on a bad Knicks team that he has averaged for us, and Payton got cut by the worst team in the league even though it desperately needs a pg. NOP is taking a cheap look at Payton. If he plays 20+mpg in the playoffs, then you might have some evidence to support your position. As of now, none of this amounts to anything that makes me think we were wrong to dump those guys.

And Nicholson most certainly didn't get "jerked around." That language absolves him of his poor play, for which he is primarily responsible. He got benched because he played poorly. That's how it's supposed to work. The fact that all of those guys got so many minutes and so much usage despite playing poorly is evidence of our willingness to play our young guys, not evidence that we buried them or were unfair to them. (Payton's usage was 18 his rookie year and above 20 every year after that. By comparison DJ's was 18.6 last year.)

Having a young team means losing a lot. Losing a lot means lottery picks with more younger players. Delaying the process of putting said young players in a lineup together until there are 10-15 games left in the season instead of giving them a bulk of the minutes and growing together is not only bad for evaluation, it backs up the entire process of growth. Those young guys that had to wait a year to actually be involved or play with the guys they envisioned playing with at the start aren't going to let some new rookie come in, no matter how ready or not he is, and let them basically skip an entire phase that they had to go through. It fostered a bad environment where everything seemed to be the slow burn approach.

If you want to make an argument for tanking, ok. I'm actually on the fence about that. But the suggestion that Payton (or Hark or KOQ or anybody) would have developed profoundly better if he had played more with other young guys overlooks the fact that Payton played boatloads of minutes with young guys like Dipo, Vooch, Harris, Hark, and KOQ, and more to the point, it absolves Payton of his own responsibility for his poor play. Instead of concluding, as Ockham's razor would suggest, that Payton played poorly because he isn't good, his poor play is attributed to factors independent of Payton (bad fit/jerked around/Skiles is mean/Vogel is dumb/bad system/Devos sucks/Martins sucks).

And, of course, blaming things other than the player himself relieves his supporters of having to inspect the flaws in their assumptions and logic, freeing them up to continue to apply the same flawed assumptions and logic in other basketball contexts.

You're arguing an entirely different point than I am. I'm talking about the overall development of most of the young players we've had, not once did I say anything about Payton or him not getting a fair shake. I even gave examples of the people that kinda got screwed here. I certainly think he got enough minutes and he played just "decent" for most of it his career here. It's obvious we hired the wrong coaches for the rebuild, so that didn't help any of the situations for any of the players.

[basketballRob]

Nope.
Financial prosperity, enforcing our border laws (lowest illegal immigration rate in 17 years), job creation, putting America first in terms of trade deals, peace through strength. a Reagan style trajectory is Pretty much what I voted for. So nope. I'm quite happy.

lol. Blind followers are fun to watch.

Those trade deals are not putting “America First” they are putting America alone.

I’m enjoying the short term financial gains as much as anyone but all of us in the financial sector are bracing for the fall soon to come. All markets are forecasting a correction recession soon. I won’t blame Trump when it happens just as I don’t give him credit for the current financial lift. His trade war won’t help the situation but these predictions date back before such events.

Typical. If you want discourse then have discourse. There's no need to go into Dem mode and insult people by calling them blind just because they don't agree with you. I'm not blind I use all the same evidence that's publicly available to you and I form my opinion just like you do.
Anyway back on topic

Lol. Some people chose not to argue with you doesn't make your views any more true than liberals views. If you really want a political discussion about Trump, bring it.

[Catledge]

You're arguing an entirely different point than I am. I'm talking about the overall development of most of the young players we've had, not once did I say anything about Payton or him not getting a fair shake. I even gave examples of the people that kinda got screwed here. I certainly think he got enough minutes and he played just "decent" for most of it his career here. It's obvious we hired the wrong coaches for the rebuild, so that didn't help any of the situations for any of the players.

I apologize if this is too much of an oversimplification, but this is what I thought we were disagreeing about.

My position: The rebuild failed because the young players we drafted and traded for were just not very talented.

Your position: The rebuild failed because the Magic Organization in general, and Skiles and Vogel (and Vaughn?) in particular, are bad at developing players.

Am I accurately summarizing your primary thesis?

[VFX]

You're arguing an entirely different point than I am. I'm talking about the overall development of most of the young players we've had, not once did I say anything about Payton or him not getting a fair shake. I even gave examples of the people that kinda got screwed here. I certainly think he got enough minutes and he played just "decent" for most of it his career here. It's obvious we hired the wrong coaches for the rebuild, so that didn't help any of the situations for any of the players.

I apologize if this is too much of an oversimplification, but this is what I thought we were disagreeing about.

My position: The rebuild failed because the young players we drafted and traded for were just not very talented.

Your position: The rebuild failed because the Magic Organization in general, and Skiles and Vogel (and Vaughn?) in particular, are bad at developing players.

Am I accurately summarizing your primary thesis?

It’s a combination of both.

Obviously Oladipo had more to his game (whether or not we would ever see it in Orlando) and players like OQuinn/Dedmon were valuable elsewhere in the nba. As far as that goes, there weren’t really many other success stories. The jury is still out on AG (at pick 4) , Isaac, and Bamba.

On the other hand, EP, Mario, and Oladipo to an extent were not put in good situations while in Orlando.

[SOUL]

You're arguing an entirely different point than I am. I'm talking about the overall development of most of the young players we've had, not once did I say anything about Payton or him not getting a fair shake. I even gave examples of the people that kinda got screwed here. I certainly think he got enough minutes and he played just "decent" for most of it his career here. It's obvious we hired the wrong coaches for the rebuild, so that didn't help any of the situations for any of the players.

I apologize if this is too much of an oversimplification, but this is what I thought we were disagreeing about.

My position: The rebuild failed because the young players we drafted and traded for were just not very talented.

Your position: The rebuild failed because the Magic Organization in general, and Skiles and Vogel (and Vaughn?) in particular, are bad at developing players.

Am I accurately summarizing your primary thesis?

More or less, but I think there is blame to be given everywhere, it's never solely in one spot. I don't agree with people saying it's 100% on the players, nor do I agree with people arguing that it was 100% on management. I just think we ignored really obvious areas that we should've given a lot of attention and care to, and ignored it in favor of short-term successes, like wins at the end of a season, or undeserving minutes to veterans just because they're vets. It was as if there were two thought processes coming from upper management, and we ended up doing neither, which resulted in a now second rebuild.

I think your examples were a bit weak though. Nobody is referring to Nicholson or Jones when we air our our grievances with how we handled the rebuild. A lot of it is about the players I named (Harris, Gordon, Oladipo, Mario, etc) and the process in which we evaluated them/didn't let them entirely grow together for extended periods of time/gave up on them for veteran pieces that failed. We've seen Harris improve and be useful (even though he gets traded a lot), Oladipo is a star, KOQ, Harkless have been useful in their roles, and I assume Payton and Mario can do the same for NO/NY. It's not that we've had a lack of talent here, we just failed to establish roles for a lot of these players and set a lot of their growth back a year with how we incorporated younger players into a team that was young but would always have a number of veterans in starting positions/as a bench unit together dominating the ball. Our overall patience level with the team was as if we were watching our finals teams.

I made this argument a while ago, I think I was talking to BadMofoPimp. He was saying how it was fine that we were giving minutes to vets and how the "kids" will get their chances eventually, and I told him how yeah, that's fine, but fans and management will become impatient with things as seasons progress, and the year or two that can be given to players to make mistakes and not be raked over the coals for certain things is taken away when it's suddenly the next year, and management/fans/etc all have new (misguided) hope, and think that it's all going to just suddenly work out despite not getting the reps or experience they should've already gotten with each other besides in training camp. It breeds a warped learning/expectation curve.

I felt like we took a San Antonio Spurs approach to things, and that works because they had three established hall of famers on their team and were a well-oiled machine from top to bottom. We had to change our mindset and we didn't.

[rcklsscognition]

Read on Twitter

Could be big for us.

[Catledge]

I made this argument a while ago, I think I was talking to BadMofoPimp. He was saying how it was fine that we were giving minutes to vets and how the "kids" will get their chances eventually, and I told him how yeah, that's fine, but fans and management will become impatient with things as seasons progress, and the year or two that can be given to players to make mistakes and not be raked over the coals for certain things is taken away when it's suddenly the next year, and management/fans/etc all have new (misguided) hope, and think that it's all going to just suddenly work out despite not getting the reps or experience they should've already gotten with each other besides in training camp. It breeds a warped learning/expectation curve.

You've got a couple of thing going on in here, and I'm only really trying to disagree with half of it.

With respect to organizational impatience and winning games that we should have been trying to lose, I can go along with all of that. I might not be quite as committed of a tanker as you are, but I see the wisdom of your argument . Further, I acknowledge that my slightly less enthusiastic stance on tanking might be just because I can't take it anymore.

But with respect to the development of the players that we drafted and traded for, that's 90% about the players' talent level. I don't see much long-term impact from a guy taking 30% more or fewer shots in his rookie year or from playing with a particular teammate in his rookie year.

[tiderulz]

You're arguing an entirely different point than I am. I'm talking about the overall development of most of the young players we've had, not once did I say anything about Payton or him not getting a fair shake. I even gave examples of the people that kinda got screwed here. I certainly think he got enough minutes and he played just "decent" for most of it his career here. It's obvious we hired the wrong coaches for the rebuild, so that didn't help any of the situations for any of the players.

I apologize if this is too much of an oversimplification, but this is what I thought we were disagreeing about.

My position: The rebuild failed because the young players we drafted and traded for were just not very talented.

Your position: The rebuild failed because the Magic Organization in general, and Skiles and Vogel (and Vaughn?) in particular, are bad at developing players.

Am I accurately summarizing your primary thesis?

It’s a combination of both.

Obviously Oladipo had more to his game (whether or not we would ever see it in Orlando) and players like OQuinn/Dedmon were valuable elsewhere in the nba. As far as that goes, there weren’t really many other success stories. The jury is still out on AG (at pick 4) , Isaac, and Bamba.

On the other hand, EP, Mario, and Oladipo to an extent were not put in good situations while in Orlando.

I agree its a combination of both, but i put more fault on the lack of talent of the players.

[pepe1991]

Imo one of biggest overlooked problem with Magic drafting is that they kept drafting players who were not ready to contribute right away, and lot of "high potential" guys end up having much less potential than most originally thought.
Oladipo was only player that they drafted since 2013 that was good enough to earn PT.

It's laughable and sad at once how raw some rookies are, not just Magic ones but overall. You literally have situations where you have to teach grown a** man how to handle a ball and make non doimnant hand layup at age of 20.
Half of them can't shoot or have messed up mechanics.
I watch nba for solid 17 years, and i have never seen more flops in lottery than last 5 years. We literally had first overall pick from 2017 who forgot how to shoot.

They arrive in nba at age of 19-20 and they have skills of 12 year olds, just in body of grown men. Not to mention that most of them become lottery picks due their oversized body that allows them to dominate without skills. ( Jah OKafor, Coddy Zeller ...)

[DiplomaticMagic]

Evan Fournier is far from my favorite player but he's by far my favorite interview. Everyone else likes to be political correct and be cliche but Evan tells it like it is and gives you a ton of quotables.

Also John Denton should be banned from asking questions, the way he tries to put words in players mouth is shameful.

[DiplomaticMagic]

Clifford again downplayed Bamba 3rd day in a row, his "I hope people are fair to him" stance sounds more like I hope people are fair to me playing him 15 mins a game.

[Catledge]

Also John Denton should be banned from asking questions, the way he tries to put words in players mouth is shameful.

I used to play a lot of pickup ball with Denton at the Winter Park YMCA. I went out for lunch with him several times after we played, and he would tell me stories about stuff he couldn't print. He was very good at cultivating sources and breaking stories (was the first to break the T-Mac trade story), but that's just not his job anymore now that he works for the Magic. In fact, it's the opposite of his job.

I've often wondered which job he prefers. I imagine his current job with the Magic is a lot less work and a lot less stress, and I would guess that it probably pays better than Florida Today did, but he never gets to enjoy the win of scooping Brian Schmitz.

[Knightro]

Clifford again downplayed Bamba 3rd day in a row, his "I hope people are fair to him" stance sounds more like I hope people are fair to me playing him 15 mins a game.

He’s the backup center.

He’s going to play 15-20 minutes a night. That really shouldn’t be breaking news to anyone.

[rcklsscognition]

Or they're preparing everyone for Bamba to be the 3rd string center.

[gov1718]

Magic trade Aaron Gordon, Terrence Ross, Nic Vucevic to T Wolves for Jimmy Butler, Jeff Teague, Taj Gibson. Butler signs extension.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

[MagicStarwipe]

Or they're preparing everyone for Bamba to be the 3rd string center.

That would be a whole new level of incompetence.