BREAKING: Magic acquire Desmond Bane (KCP, Cole + 4 1st Round Picks + 1 1st Round Pick Swap)

[BadMofoPimp]

and his value is lower and I don't see a lot of starting gigs anymore. Do you?

No, but I don't see him accepting less than close to the MLE.

he won't get close to the MLE. He F'ed up by choosing PHX last summer.

He still shot 40%+ last season with 5apg. I seriously doubt he is looking for a cheap contract to ride the bench anymore. He can still get close to the MLE with some team and more minutes possibly even starting.

[thelead]

No, but I don't see him accepting less than close to the MLE.

he won't get close to the MLE. He F'ed up by choosing PHX last summer.

He still shot 40%+ last season with 5apg. I seriously doubt he is looking for a cheap contract to ride the bench anymore. He can still get close to the MLE with some team and more minutes possibly even starting.

I don't see it (the money part). We'll see.

[BadMofoPimp]

he won't get close to the MLE. He F'ed up by choosing PHX last summer.

He still shot 40%+ last season with 5apg. I seriously doubt he is looking for a cheap contract to ride the bench anymore. He can still get close to the MLE with some team and more minutes possibly even starting.

I don't see it (the money part). We'll see.

He won't be a Magician unless they can pony up $10 mil per plus. He accepted less with the Suns cuz of the team they had could have boosted his value but they had so many injuries.

[bigdogdylan5]

I've shared this stat before, but I'll share it again...

16 NBA players had a USG rate over 30% last season.

Of those 16...

Paolo was 15th of 16 in TS%.

Franz was 14th of 16 in TS%.

If you expand it a little past 30% and pick up the next 10 players on the USG% list, Paolo drops to 25th of 26 and Franz to 24th of 26.

No doubt they have to be more efficient. The numbers and how you present them are concerning but I honestly think it’s not a huge deal. Their usage rates are so damn inflated last year because of no Suggs and complete lack of anyone else to do anything on offense. This also played a factor in deflating their TS (which granted is not a metric that treats them both kindly). It led to a lack of confidence and a lot of forcing you know this. They are also two of the youngest guys on that usage list. I just think it’s unwise to take many sweeping conclusions from last year.

[VFX]

Paolo in his 3rd season took 6 3fgas per game, Tatum in his 3rd season took 7. Paolo is obviously a worse shooter, but the volume is there at a comparable age/experience.

Franz in his 4th season took 5.9 3fgas, Brown in his 3rd season took the same amount of- but again, a better shooter.

The volume is there from our leads and it will continue to grow - hopefully the efficiency does as well. That will clearly be a deciding factor in the team’s ceiling.

But there just isn’t another blueprint for team makeup that compares as well as Boston’s does for us. And we’re going to have to tailor that to the pieces we end up with, too. No team is an exact match of a previous team.

The volume is not really comparable though because Paolo and Franz have much higher usage rates at the same experience level than Tatum and Brown had. They're using a lot more possessions and still taking a much lower volume of threes at obviously much worse accuracy.

Tatum in year 3: 38.3% of all of his attempts were 3s and he made 40%.

Paolo in year 3: 29.9% of all of his attempts were 3s and he made 32%.

Brown in year 4: 38.1% of all of his attempts were 3s and he made 38%.

Franz in year 4: 30.3% of all of his attempts were 3s and he made 29.5%.

These are not simply comparable. The gap between the Boston guys and the Orlando guys is actually staggering.

Yeah, there are clearly differences in how they are scoring points, but to say the exact same volume of shots isn't comparable just because the total shot diet isn't an exact match is really splitting hairs. If Paolo and Franz start shooting as well as Tatum and Brown whilst maintaining their offensive X factor in their high FTr and higher AST% at younger ages, they'll be an even more potent package.

This is a deviation from the original point, that both Paolo and Franz create all of their offense from the outside-in. What I think VFX should have said as a distinguishing difference is that Tatum and Brown's X factor is from the outside, whilst Paolo and Franz's is from the inside where they get to the line a lot. We clearly need shrink the delta in difference between them, but as Tatum and Brown started as great shooters and had to grow into high USG playmakers, Paolo and Franz instead started as high level interior scorers and need to grow into high volume and efficiency shooters.

And again, there's not many other examples of successful team blueprints to hold up as an example to emulate (within reason), which was my main point. Happy to discuss other comparisons if anyone has them.

My main point in disputing the “Boston blueprint” is that the comparison between the two stops at “two Forwards to build around as Batman and Robin”. That’s really where the similarities end to be honest.

They don’t have the same tendencies. Paolo and Franz are less efficient, even if you extrapolate their ages. They have different games and profiles. Their games are both iso heavy and getting to the line. (Tatum does too but he also is just a more efficient shot maker from outside, I’ll let that slide though).

BUT I will say that they haven’t had the same caliber of supporting cast in their defense. Tatum was a rookie with Kyrie Irving. Paolo had Fultz. So maybe if you want to be rosier about the comparison you could say “we haven’t seen it yet for reason X”. I’ll politely disagree but what does it matter.

This is also pretty much the reason why I’m not fond of this blueprint comparison. One system works because it has a lot of shot making everywhere on the court. It also has competent guard playmakers. It’s not an either or situation. Tatum can hit shots and so can his back court.

Let’s also not pretend that Pritchard in Orlando would be in the conversation as a starter here. A thread or two would be made about that topic. That’s not a small caveat. I think Suggs is better 100%, but it’s a conversation that would be disputed based on skillset for sure.

Orlando has shot making now in theory with Bane but the system, unless we are expecting Mosely to rehaul it completely, relies on the same gameplan we saw from Paolo and Franz… just with the added benefit of Bane hitting the open threes KCP wasn’t.

Yeah, they’ll run more actions for Bane. He’s a guy that hits a ridiculous % off a catch screen. Not sure I saw a lot of that being run though in Orlando to be honest. Mosely might have to draw something up rather than rolling the ball onto the floor and giving Paolo and Franz a thumbs up for stagnant iso crap resulting in bottom 5 offense.

[pepe1991]

I had some numbers yesterday but didn't post.

Basically, Tatum during championship run made 229/609 3s, meaning over 40% of all FGA were 3FGA.

Paolo and Franz combined (106 games total ) made 194 threes on 624 shots. That made 30% of their total shots.

In other words, Tatum alone gave his team 114 more points on 15 shots less.

You can't supplement bad shooting with more shooting.

In playoffs, in order to average 2,8 points more as "Robin" , Franz took 44 shots more than Brown.

And if anything, Celtics vs Magic, ugly series from watching POV, and grindhouse, proved one thing- Tatum (before injury) was simply much better player than Banchero and Franz are today. That also answers question how they won title. They had top 5 player.

About raw APGs of some Celtics players, Celtics last year and this year played in very slow pace in playoffs. That hurts assists, but despite being 5th slowest playoff team in championship year, they were also 5th in most APGs as team.

I hate this idea of copycat league and trying to mimic champion. 80% is probably most some team can "copy" other team, and no champion would be champion if you dumb them down by 20% ( maybe 2017 Warriors, some Bulls or Kobe-Shaq teams would, but that's probably it).

No matter what, Paolo and Franz can't be this bad in efficiency if team goal is more than second round.

[Bensational]

My main point in disputing the “Boston blueprint” is that the comparison between the two stops at “two Forwards to build around as Batman and Robin”. That’s really where the similarities end to be honest.

They don’t have the same tendencies. Paolo and Franz are less efficient, even if you extrapolate their ages. They have different games and profiles. Their games are both iso heavy and getting to the line. (Tatum does too but he also is just a more efficient shot maker from outside, I’ll let that slide though).

BUT I will say that they haven’t had the same caliber of supporting cast in their defense. Tatum was a rookie with Kyrie Irving. Paolo had Fultz. So maybe if you want to be rosier about the comparison you could say “we haven’t seen it yet for reason X”. I’ll politely disagree but what does it matter.

One system works because it has a lot of shot making everywhere on the court. It also has competent guard playmakers. It’s not an either or situation. Tatum can hit shots and so can his back court.

That's what excites me - the major gap between the Magic and the Celtics is 3pt shooting, and the team has acknowledged as much and just went out and got a volume shooter before the season is over. I think more is coming. And positive signs from the last 2 post seasons is that Paolo has averaged 40% and 44% from 3 in each post season, shooting over 5 attempts per game.

I'd like to see another PG added to the team, though, because Indy is showing you can't have too many ball handlers and passers as long as they're all on the same page, and it opens up 3pt shooting as well as anything. I hear your concerns about the Magic and our pieces in general, I just feel confident and optimistic that management will address that this summer and the team will address it throughout next season. Bane is a good start. The team sees their window and they're shooting their shot, and I'm all aboard.

[zaymon]

Bane is not as bad on ball as you think. This season he had 23.3% usg, 23.6% ast, 13.3% tov. Last season without Ja 28.5% usg, 29.2% ast, 11.7% tov.
As a pick and roll ball handler he was around 70 percentile with Ja and in 83 percentile last season without Ja. He also drived around 10 times a game with over 52% fg%.

Suggs best season 27.5% usg, 21.6% ast, 16.2% tov

Derrick White best season 19.9% usg, 22.9% ast, 11.6% tov

Jrue Holiday averages for his carrier are 22.7% usg, 29.3% ast, 15.1% tov
Holiday best pnr season is in 83.9 percentile opposed to Bane 83.1 with Bane having 0.5 possesions more per game.

Nembhard 15.8.3% usg, 22.5% ast, 16.3% tov

Murray 27.9% usg, 31.2% ast, 10.5% tov

All in all Bane is not the worst playmaker of them all, best shooter and propably better than Murray and Nembhard defensively.

Two things can be true at once. Desmond Bane is not a PG and if you try and make him one that is doing a disservice to his talent. Can he run some pick and roll absolutely and he is good at it. He is good at coming off and being a pull-up threat he is quick to attack and he is a quick decision maker with crisp passing. If he even gets cut off his mid range shot is great too. Where he struggles is when he gets too much on ball pressure. His handle is loose and it’s why Caruso and Dort ate his lunch but again they are two of the best defenders in the league and they’re in the other conference lol. Like using that in your argument is so disingenuous. Look if you believe Paolo and Franz are still ascending and they’re on track to be stars then this is a perfect fit home run trade. If you think Franz and Paolo are who they are then to you this will be doubling down on a flawed philosophy.

I am not sure if we understand each other fully.
I am not trying to prove that Bane is a PG ( if i was trying to show that i would have to compare him to SGA, Haliburton or Brunson and their stats are totally different).
I was trying to show that his stats are comparable or even better than some of the most successful combo guards playing in a role of point guard like Murray or point guards playing a role of combo guard like Jrue.
He can create for himself much better than for others.

I dont think we need a true point guard next to Franz and Paolo. If they cant handle the ball in pressure moments than the whole concept of our team fails and we need to trade one of Banchero/Wagner.- thats where i disagree with pepe and vfx
Before the season i thought KCP makes no sense next to Suggs. What i am trying to show is that Bane is different.
Still it doesnt mean this roster will win a championship or that we cant pivot in 2-3 years.

[sk8wrulz]

Yeah, they’ll run more actions for Bane. He’s a guy that hits a ridiculous % off a catch screen. Not sure I saw a lot of that being run though in Orlando to be honest. Mosely might have to draw something up rather than rolling the ball onto the floor and giving Paolo and Franz a thumbs up for stagnant iso crap resulting in bottom 5 offense.

Imagine if we were to implement a system of ball movement (aka Pacers) with Wagner and Banchero as cutters, Bane and Suggs with catch and shoot 3s.

[JBSouthpaw]

Trading KCP, (possibly) cutting Harris and Joseph sure would dropped our AVG age metric.

[JoshuaPotter]

It's been 4 days since I found out about the trade and still only feeling better. I'm staring at Suggs REALLY hard to get healthy and back to form.

[Skybox]

It's been 4 days since I found out about the trade and still only feeling better. I'm staring at Suggs REALLY hard to get healthy and back to form.

If Suggs is shooting 40% from 3 on high-volume and spearheading hellacious defense (and Isaac doing the same-if lesser volume & mpg)...

[Skybox]

Yeah, they’ll run more actions for Bane. He’s a guy that hits a ridiculous % off a catch screen. Not sure I saw a lot of that being run though in Orlando to be honest. Mosely might have to draw something up rather than rolling the ball onto the floor and giving Paolo and Franz a thumbs up for stagnant iso crap resulting in bottom 5 offense.

Imagine if we were to implement a system of ball movement (aka Pacers) with Wagner and Banchero as cutters, Bane and Suggs with catch and shoot 3s.

This deserves a thread of its own...how do we do this? This is mostly what keeps me up now...how do we ensure that it doesn't resemble last year's offense with different faces.

[VFX]

My main point in disputing the “Boston blueprint” is that the comparison between the two stops at “two Forwards to build around as Batman and Robin”. That’s really where the similarities end to be honest.

They don’t have the same tendencies. Paolo and Franz are less efficient, even if you extrapolate their ages. They have different games and profiles. Their games are both iso heavy and getting to the line. (Tatum does too but he also is just a more efficient shot maker from outside, I’ll let that slide though).

BUT I will say that they haven’t had the same caliber of supporting cast in their defense. Tatum was a rookie with Kyrie Irving. Paolo had Fultz. So maybe if you want to be rosier about the comparison you could say “we haven’t seen it yet for reason X”. I’ll politely disagree but what does it matter.

One system works because it has a lot of shot making everywhere on the court. It also has competent guard playmakers. It’s not an either or situation. Tatum can hit shots and so can his back court.

That's what excites me - the major gap between the Magic and the Celtics is 3pt shooting, and the team has acknowledged as much and just went out and got a volume shooter before the season is over. I think more is coming. And positive signs from the last 2 post seasons is that Paolo has averaged 40% and 44% from 3 in each post season, shooting over 5 attempts per game.

I'd like to see another PG added to the team, though, because Indy is showing you can't have too many ball handlers and passers as long as they're all on the same page, and it opens up 3pt shooting as well as anything. I hear your concerns about the Magic and our pieces in general, I just feel confident and optimistic that management will address that this summer and the team will address it throughout next season. Bane is a good start. The team sees their window and they're shooting their shot, and I'm all aboard.

I'm really hoping one of two things happens this offseason...

1) They hire a coordinator on offense that knows what they are doing.
2) Mosely completely changes how he has run things on offense if #1 doesn't happen. Maybe he reads a "Good NBA offense for dummies" book in the summer.

A few things are true about last season and how Bane operated in previous seasons.

Orlando has one of the slowest paced offenses in the NBA. Memphis had the fastest. Orlando ranked #30, Memphis ranked #1.
This isn't to suggest that "faster is better", but you can't be slow AND bad. That just tells me there isnt really a system at all. We know for sure that there weren't a huge variation of plays being called here.

Orlando was bottom 5 in these categories (Assist%, Assist/TO ratio, EG%, and TS%)
Ultimately, this means Orlando had the least amount of possessions (ranked last), while also being the least efficient league-wide as the worst offense. Then they decided that shooting was a larger issue than ball movement. Thats a pretty impressive task to be honest with two players on exceedingly high usage and you are handing max contract to both. It tells me the system is broken in more ways than adding one shooter.

Sure, Bane helps with ball movement more than KCP or Gary Harris did. He can get a shot without absolutely needing to be wide open. However, Bane in Orlando without the aforementioned system is what player exactly? Is he still putting up the same numbers in the slowest offense in the league, on the lowest amount of possessions, shared with two guys needing the ball in their hands to be effective, with bottom ranked assist numbers and percentage? Color me slightly skeptical.

I'm not saying it wont work, but I haven't seen a flourishing system yet where offense is easily replicated with the players you expect it to come from. It's not like we have been watching Giannis, Jokic, or SGA here and we are adding a missing ingredient to put Orlando over the edge offensively. We haven't seen a real system at all yet.

The argument here from people on this trade is that we haven't seen a real system yet, due to shooting, and adding Bane is somehow foundational to this all working. Its a bigger risk than people actually can conceive of yet because it required a lot of assets and it implies the current system isn't inherently flawed on principle as the actual numbers suggest.. We will see.

[fendilim]

Orlando has shot making now in theory with Bane but the system, unless we are expecting Mosely to rehaul it completely, relies on the same gameplan we saw from Paolo and Franz… just with the added benefit of Bane hitting the open threes KCP wasn’t.

Yeah, they’ll run more actions for Bane. He’s a guy that hits a ridiculous % off a catch screen. Not sure I saw a lot of that being run though in Orlando to be honest. Mosely might have to draw something up rather than rolling the ball onto the floor and giving Paolo and Franz a thumbs up for stagnant iso crap resulting in bottom 5 offense.

Look, I get the frustration here, but at the same time, I think Mosley’s put up a system that plays to everybody’s strength.

There were times early in Caleb Houstan’s career when we had him coming off screens to shoot a 3 and he would miss badly. I’m so glad Mosley has adjusted to that.

Towards the end of the season, we did ran some plays to get KCP off screens to shoot midrange jumpers to start the game.

If we had a movement shooter like maybe Jordan hawkins then we’d see more of coming off screen actions. But we don’t. I’d be shocked if we even have Bane come off screens to catch and shoot. That just not to his strengths.

[Knightro]

I'm not expecting the pace to increase all that much for whatever that's worth.

That feels very much a strategic decision so the Magic can maximize their effort defensively and on the defensive glass.

I also don't think a slow pace is death knell for offensive success either.

Boston was 29th in pace and 2nd on offense.
New York was 26th in pace and 5th on offense.
Minnesota was 25th in pace and 8th on offense.

[VFX]

I'm not expecting the pace to increase all that much for whatever that's worth.

That feels very much a strategic decision so the Magic can maximize their effort defensively and on the defensive glass.

I also don't think a slow pace is death knell for offensive success either.

Boston was 29th in pace and 2nd on offense.
New York was 26th in pace and 5th on offense.
Minnesota was 25th in pace and 8th on offense.

It is not to say that faster is better.

It's asking the question as to whether Desmond Bane is the same player in the complete opposite system with the complete opposite roster around him.

Those 3 systems you listed are good on offense because they are efficient in a slow pace and can score rather easily in the half court in a variety of ways. Orlando is not only slow, but inefficient up to this point.

I do agree though that it will prioritize the defense further and games will be physical grindfests.

[thelead]

Back of my mind, negative thought…. What if KCP regains his 40% shooting next to Ja and Bane slips to sub 36% this upcoming season?

Does Weltman get fired for not bringing in a PG or is he allowed the opportunity to fix the issue?

[VFX]

Back of my mind, negative thought…. What if KCP regains his 40% shooting next to Ja and Bane slips to sub 36% this upcoming season?

Does Weltman get fired for not bringing in a PG or is he allowed the opportunity to fix the issue?

Well..

Memphis' system is currently built to be more conducive to shooters, or at least the numbers tell us that from last years statistics.

I wouldn't be surprised if he posts better numbers than he did in Orlando.

[thelead]

Back of my mind, negative thought…. What if KCP regains his 40% shooting next to Ja and Bane slips to sub 36% this upcoming season?

Does Weltman get fired for not bringing in a PG or is he allowed the opportunity to fix the issue?

Well..

Memphis' system is currently built to be more conducive to shooters, or at least the numbers tell us that from last years statistics.

I wouldn't be surprised if he posts better numbers than he did in Orlando.

The real issue would be if we see Bane’s efficiency dip after being a career 41% shooter. Mosley gets fired for sure in this scenario but what about Weltman? Does he get to skate by while ignoring the PG position his entire tenure here?