2022-2023 Regular Season Game 74: New York Knicks (42-32) at Orlando Magic (30-43) - 7pm

[drsd]

As always, we are collecting wins by the end of season, so we can get a worse draft spot and miss a better player by 1-2 spots, but we are building a winning culture, right? Right?!?

Exactly.

Orlando is learning how to close out 4th quarters to beat quality teams. These games are priceless lessons. If the Magic draft 4 or 6, who cares. It is about learning to win.

[IllMagic04]

Yes, let's draft the next Mo Bamba instead of Doncic/Trae for these reasons...

It feels a bit disingenuous criticism for this current team. We finished 3rd in the 2021 Suggs/Wagner year and went to 5th, we finished 2nd last year in 2022 and went up to 1st. If you are continually drafting at the top, if your picks hit, you would hope that you are actually drafting later in your 3rd and 4th years because that means you aren't trash anymore. I saw it on reddit, but our record as the 5th worst team in the league would be the "best 5th worst" in the history of the NBA. It means there's just a lot of decent to great teams right now, and we were early injuries away from being a cemented play-in team.

I agree that when we had really trash teams that had no future or great talent, winning useless games at the end of the year meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. But players will always want to win. I remember the Wizards game we won in that Doncic draft and I forgot who was coaching, but he played some pretty trash players that just went off.. but I think we played our starters the 1st quarter and then stopped when we should've just never played any of them at all.

This year is different though. I think you just have to live with the results, regardless of what happens. Maybe Franz is held out longer than usual (which is usually him not missing a game) after spraining his ankles and maybe we have better looks at some of our other guys. I'm of the mindset that we should start to lean heavier on the young guys more since playins are a very remote chance, but I can't fault or get mad that the team is either too good to easily lose or have competitive spirit and aren't concerned with being the 5th worst team instead of the 7th worst.

Ehh. establishing "winning culture" wins happend in 2015 and 2016, 2017 and 2018 as well.

2014-15 Magic win 3 in a row in last 7 games.
2015-16 Magic win 6 of last 10 games.
2016-17 they tanked little better at the end
2017-18 they win 3 of last 6 games

In theory, if they lost all 6 of games they won in 2016, Magic might could have had Brandon Ingram, because Pelicans went 2# with 5 wins less. Or even if they just won several less, they would have been in range for Jamal Murray.

But worst result of not tanking toward the end was 2018 when they were in range for Trae & Luka and they beat Dallas in meaningless game and got Bum-ba instad.

late edit: they did good job at the end of 2021 & 2022 to secure tank. Hence, that's why they won lottery & got 4th pick in back to back lotteries.

We already won too many games to be "secure" so i guess it doesn't really matter now? Still , going from 5th worst to potentially 8th worst cuts your odds of drafting top 3 from 31,6% to 19%. For comparison sake, Bulls at current seed, have 14,5% chance at top 3.

The situations are completely different. We didn’t have our building blocks like we do now. Paolo and Franz are our guys. Those years we desperately needed to get a high enough pick to get a star. Also the lottery odds were different back then. But even within those odds in 2018 the Kings had the 7th best odds and moved to 2. So had we won more we could've drafted Luka. Speaking of that you do remember Luka and Trae didn’t go 1 and 2 right? Alot of people ( you included) thought Trae Young was gonna be a bust. On lottery night I felt pretty good that Trae was honna be there at 6.

Bottom line its a lottery. You never know how the ping pong balls will fall and you never know what teams in front of you will do. Im personally gonna enjoy watching guys who are actually going to be here in the future play good basketball late in the year.

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[VFX]

As always, we are collecting wins by the end of season, so we can get a worse draft spot and miss a better player by 1-2 spots, but we are building a winning culture, right? Right?!?

Exactly.

Orlando is learning how to close out 4th quarters to beat quality teams. These games are priceless lessons. If the Magic draft 4 or 6, who cares. It is about learning to win.

I dunno.

I’d rather have Brandon Miller than Gradey Dick at the expense of a few games nobody will remember next season.

Maybe that’s just me.

[Ralof]

3d season of tanking,we already are +30 W and more important:banchero,wagner,anthony,fultz,wcj are more or less all balling and they are under 25-26 yo + (underated) houastan could get playing time in competitive games.

there is no reason to"rest"guys to lose games,just playing along and see what happens like we did until now.

maybe last 2-3 games you could let end of the bench guys to have more playing times,like last day of school,lol

[IllMagic04]

As always, we are collecting wins by the end of season, so we can get a worse draft spot and miss a better player by 1-2 spots, but we are building a winning culture, right? Right?!?

Exactly.

Orlando is learning how to close out 4th quarters to beat quality teams. These games are priceless lessons. If the Magic draft 4 or 6, who cares. It is about learning to win.

I dunno.

I’d rather have Brandon Miller than Gradey Dick at the expense of a few games nobody will remember next season.

Maybe that’s just me.

https://tankathon.com/pick_odds

We are not getting in the bottom 4. Getting Miller would require lottery luck as I believe he's going number 2. Hell even if we were in the bottom 4 it would require lottery luck as all 4 teams have the same odds for picks 1-4.

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[SOUL]

In theory, if they lost all 6 of games they won in 2016, Magic might could have had Brandon Ingram, because Pelicans went 2# with 5 wins less. Or even if they just won several less, they would have been in range for Jamal Murray.

It's easy to play what if games though. So many teams can win/lose specific games, win/lose coin tosses, etc. The simple fact of the matter is the only thing you CAN count on tanking for, and I know you have argued the merits against tanking so maybe I'm singing to the choir here, but it just secures your bottom range. If a team is the 3rd worst team and doesn't mind falling to 7 because they like the prospects in that range, then tanking has worked for that team. That's their minimum spot while giving yourself a shot at #1.

If you're tanking just hoping to get the #1 pick or bust, that's like betting the green in roulette and getting pissed when it doesn't hit. You can also just be lucky like the mid 2000s teams that all moved up from like #6 to #1 three years in a row or like the Pels or like the Cavs. I feel like we're actually due for a team to have a crazy move up.

But worst result of not tanking toward the end was 2018 when they were in range for Trae & Luka and they beat Dallas in meaningless game and got Bum-ba instad.

No argument from me here. We were in a completely different scenario though despite being the 5th worst team there with only 25 wins and could've easily lost that final game without playing our starters like we did.

We already won too many games to be "secure" so i guess it doesn't really matter now? Still , going from 5th worst to potentially 8th worst cuts your odds of drafting top 3 from 31,6% to 19%. For comparison sake, Bulls at current seed, have 14,5% chance at top 3.

That's basically my argument to MoMM though. I think they will monitor the standings but asking the players to just not play the final 10 games and hope we stay 5th instead of 7th or 8th and getting angry about losing lottery position in a year where we've seen basically the most competitive young team when healthy (not counting the two playoff years, they were older) since Dwight left, then we're in a decent spot moving forward.

It's easy to say Wemby/Scoot or bust when your team is naturally Detroit/Houston/SA bad and even those young guys don't like losing on purpose - it's a harder sell to teams like Pacers, Utah and Thunder who are naturally just ahead of schedule - and I'll even put us in there because I think without injuries we'd be in that range.

[VFX]

Exactly.

Orlando is learning how to close out 4th quarters to beat quality teams. These games are priceless lessons. If the Magic draft 4 or 6, who cares. It is about learning to win.

I dunno.

I’d rather have Brandon Miller than Gradey Dick at the expense of a few games nobody will remember next season.

Maybe that’s just me.

https://tankathon.com/pick_odds

We are not getting in the bottom 4. Getting Miller would require lottery luck as I believe he's going number 2. Hell even if we were in the bottom 4 it would require lottery luck as all 4 teams have the same odds for picks 1-4.

Sent from my SM-G970U using RealGM mobile app

We are 1 win away from being in the same territory as Washington and Portland. Orlando could drop 5%-10% out of picking top 4 should they surpass us. I’d rather have that % than a win nobody will care about in two months.

[drsd]

I dunno.

I’d rather have Brandon Miller than Gradey Dick at the expense of a few games nobody will remember next season.

Maybe that’s just me.

Orlando cannot finish worse than the 5th worst team. There is no tanking to be done. If you are concerned about the Magic climbing to 6th worst; well the lotto odds to go top-3 are nearly similar for both slots.

..

[drsd]

there is no reason to"rest"guys ....

I am concerned that ever other game F-Wagner is rolling his ankle. He might need to go on a minutes restriction to close out the season.

And he definitely needs to get some strength conditioning done for his feet this off season.

[IllMagic04]

I dunno.

I’d rather have Brandon Miller than Gradey Dick at the expense of a few games nobody will remember next season.

Maybe that’s just me.

https://tankathon.com/pick_odds

We are not getting in the bottom 4. Getting Miller would require lottery luck as I believe he's going number 2. Hell even if we were in the bottom 4 it would require lottery luck as all 4 teams have the same odds for picks 1-4.

Sent from my SM-G970U using RealGM mobile app

We are 1 win away from being in the same territory as Washington and Portland. Orlando could drop 5%-10% out of picking top 4 should they surpass us. I’d rather have that % than a win nobody will care about in two months.

Again. Its a lottery. You want Brandon Miller. Cool. We need to pick number 2 to get him. Currently we have a 10.5% chance to get him. If we catch the Wizards we will have a 9.2% chance. So this conversation is about 1.3%?

These games are valuable. If Evan Fournier was leading us to victory Id agree with you. Thats not the case. You don't see any value in our young guys playing well in high intensity meaningful games? You dont see in value in Paolo whos struggled with his 3 ball knocking down clutch ones late in games?

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[pepe1991]

It feels a bit disingenuous criticism for this current team. We finished 3rd in the 2021 Suggs/Wagner year and went to 5th, we finished 2nd last year in 2022 and went up to 1st. If you are continually drafting at the top, if your picks hit, you would hope that you are actually drafting later in your 3rd and 4th years because that means you aren't trash anymore. I saw it on reddit, but our record as the 5th worst team in the league would be the "best 5th worst" in the history of the NBA. It means there's just a lot of decent to great teams right now, and we were early injuries away from being a cemented play-in team.

I agree that when we had really trash teams that had no future or great talent, winning useless games at the end of the year meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. But players will always want to win. I remember the Wizards game we won in that Doncic draft and I forgot who was coaching, but he played some pretty trash players that just went off.. but I think we played our starters the 1st quarter and then stopped when we should've just never played any of them at all.

This year is different though. I think you just have to live with the results, regardless of what happens. Maybe Franz is held out longer than usual (which is usually him not missing a game) after spraining his ankles and maybe we have better looks at some of our other guys. I'm of the mindset that we should start to lean heavier on the young guys more since playins are a very remote chance, but I can't fault or get mad that the team is either too good to easily lose or have competitive spirit and aren't concerned with being the 5th worst team instead of the 7th worst.

Ehh. establishing "winning culture" wins happend in 2015 and 2016, 2017 and 2018 as well.

2014-15 Magic win 3 in a row in last 7 games.
2015-16 Magic win 6 of last 10 games.
2016-17 they tanked little better at the end
2017-18 they win 3 of last 6 games

In theory, if they lost all 6 of games they won in 2016, Magic might could have had Brandon Ingram, because Pelicans went 2# with 5 wins less. Or even if they just won several less, they would have been in range for Jamal Murray.

But worst result of not tanking toward the end was 2018 when they were in range for Trae & Luka and they beat Dallas in meaningless game and got Bum-ba instad.

late edit: they did good job at the end of 2021 & 2022 to secure tank. Hence, that's why they won lottery & got 4th pick in back to back lotteries.

We already won too many games to be "secure" so i guess it doesn't really matter now? Still , going from 5th worst to potentially 8th worst cuts your odds of drafting top 3 from 31,6% to 19%. For comparison sake, Bulls at current seed, have 14,5% chance at top 3.

The situations are completely different. We didn’t have our building blocks like we do now. Paolo and Franz are our guys. Those years we desperately needed to get a high enough pick to get a star. Also the lottery odds were different back then. But even within those odds in 2018 the Kings had the 7th best odds and moved to 2. So had we won more we could've drafted Luka. Speaking of that you do remember Luka and Trae didn’t go 1 and 2 right? Alot of people ( you included) thought Trae Young was gonna be a bust. On lottery night I felt pretty good that Trae was honna be there at 6.

Bottom line its a lottery. You never know how the ping pong balls will fall and you never know what teams in front of you will do. Im personally gonna enjoy watching guys who are actually going to be here in the future play good basketball late in the year.

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But one of reasons why team did not have "core" is because they were constantlly screwing up lottery either by drafting poorly or winning few meaningless games to stay away from top players.

Especially before lottery reform , tanking simply made sense. If you were worst team, you were granted top 4 pick.

Dallas - Magic thing did not include any tie breakers.
Magic won 25 games, Dallas 24. If Dallas won Magic would have had 24 wins, and Dallas 25.
That would put them in tie breaker with Hawks who ended up with 3rd pick. But here is a kicker- in last game of regular season
Magic in game for virtually nothing, played Wizards who secured playoff spot. And Magic just randomlly decided to bring starters . They only played them 12 min but in slugfest of bums Magic bums wanted to "prove "themselfs and won last quater 25-17, enough for Magic to fall from tiebreaker for potential 3rd pick to 6th pick.

If Magic lost both games they would be in play for Luka, Trae and Jaren Jackson. All 3 guys are allstars. Instad, we won 2 cultural establishing games and drafted Mo f**** Bamba.

Btw in 2017 Magic won 29 games and drafted 6th, 76ers won 28 jumped to 3# ( and drafted Tatum but crewed it up with Fultz trade). Lakers won just 3 games less to get 2# spot.

Look, i'm really not big fan of tanking nor i belive it's miracle work, but if you are in position where you are winning 25-30 games , nobody will care about mid April win carried on by Rodney Purvis that eventually costed you chance for Luka Doncic.

[SOUL]

We are 1 win away from being in the same territory as Washington and Portland. Orlando could drop 5%-10% out of picking top 4 should they surpass us. I’d rather have that % than a win nobody will care about in two months.

And Pacers and Jazz and Thunder fans (and us, to an extent) would have liked to have their teams not peak so early in a potentially generational draft, but we kinda just have to accept it. It is a good thing that we are not in the Rockets-Detroit-Spurs range even if it gives us less of a chance at Scoot/Wemby/Miller, because if we were at that range and we ended up with the 5th best pick, it means our future sucks and we also aren't getting the perceived best players. We'd be back to our first rebuild of a sketchy future and outside of easily identifiable elite talent we wanted.

As I'm someone who is pro-tank, I think it's imperative people realize that you can't expect what you or I want to override an entire franchise's current situation and say, "Look, you may have been competitive the last 3-4 months and can win 39 games if you win out, and I know you can still technically make the play-ins even though it's a long shot, but we need to lose out so we finish with a 5% better odds at a top pick to replace one of you guys!"

It's just not a realistic talking point for players with a competitive edge whether it's coming from fans, the coach or the FO to them. And imagine if we tanked for better odds and stayed 5th and dropped while the 6th pick got the #1 pick. It's the lotto after all.

Like I said, it's really for securing the bottom of it as the worst case result. So whether we're 7th-11th is really no difference to me.

We also can package our two picks assuming the Bulls one converts and do a lot of interesting trade scenarios that no other teams can do. We're in a good spot.

If it comes down to the final 2 games and we're tied, sure, empty the bench and let the 2nd-3rd stringers play, otherwise it's a bit much for a team to shut down everybody to secure four percentage points.

[drsd]

[quote="IllMagic04"]If Evan Fournier was leading us to victory Id agree with you. Thats not the case. You don't see any value in our young guys playing well in high intensity meaningful games? [quote]

And the players will try to win no matter what. Look at game-82 last year.

These were the rotational players all at 20+ minutes, and Lopez on 10 minutes.
Fultz/Cannady
Hampton
Okeke/Brazdeikis
M-Wagner/Schofield
Bamba/Lopez

That is a joke of an NBA depth chart. And what do the Magic do? Win the game.

Players don't tank.

..

[drsd]

I dunno.

I’d rather have Brandon Miller than Gradey Dick at the expense of a few games nobody will remember next season.

Maybe that’s just me.

https://tankathon.com/pick_odds

We are not getting in the bottom 4. Getting Miller would require lottery luck as I believe he's going number 2. Hell even if we were in the bottom 4 it would require lottery luck as all 4 teams have the same odds for picks 1-4.

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We are 1 win away from being in the same territory as Washington and Portland. Orlando could drop 5%-10% out of picking top 4 should they surpass us. I’d rather have that % than a win nobody will care about in two months.

You are missing the point. Banchero and F-Wagner care. There is nothing else that matters this season.

We want the young guns to play every play hard and that leads to more wins late season. Good.

..

[VFX]

https://tankathon.com/pick_odds

We are not getting in the bottom 4. Getting Miller would require lottery luck as I believe he's going number 2. Hell even if we were in the bottom 4 it would require lottery luck as all 4 teams have the same odds for picks 1-4.

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We are 1 win away from being in the same territory as Washington and Portland. Orlando could drop 5%-10% out of picking top 4 should they surpass us. I’d rather have that % than a win nobody will care about in two months.

Again. Its a lottery. You want Brandon Miller. Cool. We need to pick number 2 to get him. Currently we have a 10.5% chance to get him. If we catch the Wizards we will have a 9.2% chance. So this conversation is about 1.3%?

These games are valuable. If Evan Fournier was leading us to victory Id agree with you. Thats not the case. You don't see any value in our young guys playing well in high intensity meaningful games? You dont see in value in Paolo whos struggled with his 3 ball knocking down clutch ones late in games?

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Oh there is definitely value.

I don’t think winning these last few games is massively important if Orlando is still missing the playoffs this season and not at full health.

Yes. 1.3% matters.

[basketballRob]

Without Brunson Knicks look fairly similar to last year's team, who looks fairly similar to current Magic team.

Even with Brunson, they barely beat us. In fact, we had a double-digit most of the game.

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[drsd]

This is the first 2-game winning streak since February 4. Go Magic!

[SOUL]

If Magic lost both games they would be in play for Luka, Trae and Jaren Jackson. All 3 guys are allstars. Instad, we won 2 cultural establishing games and drafted Mo f**** Bamba.

I agree that it was always bull that those were "culture establishing games" that people were trying to argue. Who gives a **** if Jarell Martin goes off (I forgot how was on the team but it was an equivalent player ) - they will never be on the team moving forward.

That being said, this team is in a much different spot - competition wise, draft asset wise, record wise, young talent wise - doing any mental gymnastics in hopes of the team trying to finagle a way to shamelessly tank for a 5th best record instead of 7th best record to simply be in a slightly better position to draft entirely different players in a different draft and try to compare it to a past draft just isn't really worth all the mental stress. Mainly because we don't know which spots will move up or not.

Also we're in an intriguing spot where a rookie doesn't even help us right away. 80-90% chance he doesn't contribute much outside of counting stats and the timeline is pushed again. I say we're just as likely to draft a rookie (I'd say 100% we draft if we're #1-3) as we are to move the pick(s) if we fall below 4, which I'd put at like 60% trade-keep.

[pepe1991]

If Magic lost both games they would be in play for Luka, Trae and Jaren Jackson. All 3 guys are allstars. Instad, we won 2 cultural establishing games and drafted Mo f**** Bamba.

I agree that it was always bull that those were "culture establishing games" that people were trying to argue. Who gives a **** if Jarell Martin goes off (I forgot how was on the team but it was an equivalent player ) - they will never be on the team moving forward.

That being said, this team is in a much different spot - competition wise, draft asset wise, record wise, young talent wise - doing any mental gymnastics in hopes of the team trying to finagle a way to shamelessly tank for a 5th best record instead of 7th best record to simply be in a slightly better position to draft entirely different players in a different draft and try to compare it to a past draft just isn't really worth all the mental stress. Mainly because we don't know which spots will move up or not.

Also we're in an intriguing spot where a rookie doesn't even help us right away. 80-90% chance he doesn't contribute much outside of counting stats and the timeline is pushed again. I say we're just as likely to draft a rookie (I'd say 100% we draft if we're #1-3) as we are to move the pick(s) if we fall below 4, which I'd put at like 60% trade-keep.

History is what history is, it happened, nothing can be done now to change it, but 2018 given what type of players were in play, hurts the most.

But we should focus on rest of schedle:

Nets- at home, they are in second night of back to back , they will have 20 hours between games + if they lose to Heat in game prior, it will be very hard for them to recover back to 6th seed

Memphis on a road should be clear L

Wizards at home - well they lost 8 out of last 10...i assume that's W

Detroit--- lost 9 of 10- that's a W, they shut down whole roster

And now most tricky part Cavs twice. They are 2,5 games behind 76ers, it looks impossible for them to close a gap, but they won 8 of last 10. Let's go to double L

Nets & Heat at home , Both games could be meaningless for all teams.

So for rest of a year Magic could easly win 3-4 more games and shoot themselfs into 8th seed .

Draft positioning from 5th to 8th seed is noticable. I won't swet too much about draft until it happends but from outlook of situation, drafting 6-7-8 seems like most realistic scenario. ( Bulls pick is whole different story , that pick could go from being Bulls keeping it to 15th pick )

[pepe1991]

Without Brunson Knicks look fairly similar to last year's team, who looks fairly similar to current Magic team.

Even with Brunson, they barely beat us. In fact, we had a double-digit most of the game.

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Not sure what your point is?