The Real Dalic wrote:Slept on it and still pissed. I tend to be overly positive on this board even in the face of bad things, but the reason I'm mad is that because we are for sure worse than last year unless the young guys have improved a lot and if Bamba makes a huge impact defensively. It's not close, we are much worse as it currently stands.
We are essentially the same team but with a worse backup guard. Mack was very good and an underrated player. But people like to think that trash ass Grant is better because he's still in his rookie contract. His bum ass was drafted as a 22/23 year old and is currently 26. I don't care what people keep trying to say, but that's not young for an NBA player, at all. He's at the point of his career of what we've already seen, is what we're gonna get, and what I've seen is terribad.
Ok so a few things...
-Mack was FAR from a good and underrated player. He graded out as the 46th best point guard last year according to Real Plus Minus and the 56th best point guard according to Box Plus Minus.
-Grant, despite you deeming him "terribad", was slightly more productive than Mack last year and significantly more productive two years ago. Last year Grant was the 40th best PG in RPM and 50th best PG in BPM. The year before he graded out as the 18th best PG in RPM and the 24th best PG in BPM. If the Magic get the Jerian Grant from two years ago, it's a
clear upgrade over Mack. If they don't, it's still a slight upgrade or simply a wash at worst. Plus Grant is only making 2.6M as opposed to the 6M Mack was making.
-A lot of fans don't want to hear this, but the Magic lost 216 games to injury out of their 9-man rotation a year ago. That's an
average of 24 games per rotation player. A "normal" amount of injuries for a 9-man rotation in a given year is about 10 per player. If the Magic had a normal amount of injuries last year, that alone is would have been worth 7-10 additional wins.
-I'm not going to say Clifford is a massive upgrade over Vogel, but I think he's probably worth 1-2 wins more given the fact that he has a defined system and
always gets his teams to run that system. We can certainly argue the merits of Clifford's system, but he has consistently gotten his teams to implement exactly what he wants them to do which is avoid turnovers, dominate the glass and not put opponents on the foul line.
-Bamba is raw and I certainly don't expect him to play 30 minutes a game this year, but if he simply absorbs Biyombo's 18 MPG he's probably worth 1-2 wins more than Biz.
Add it all up and the Magic are looking at probably 10-12 more wins over last season. Somewhere in the 35-37 win range.