p0peye wrote:The point I am making is that having good 1-1 defender to cover Paolo is not the reason we are getting a beating.
I disagree, I would argue that this is the primary reason why. Their team is more talented top to bottom but the fact they can throw exceptional defenders at our no.1 creator is why our bad offense has been historically bad in 2 playoff games.
p0peye wrote:Yes, Cavs can matchup Paolo with a multiple defenders that can stop him in single coverage, but that is not what teams need to stop Magic.
What is then? Our offense is not good at all and it is even worse if our best offensive player has an exceptional defender in Mobley and Nieng on him. Now other guys' shots are not as open. Now other guys can't play off of him as well.
I wouldn't agree that they can straight up "stop" him but they have the best defenders to throw at him among the Knicks, Pacers, Sixers and the Bucks as currently constructed without Giannis. Often the Magic's offense does boil down into Paolo creating something so this is the chief reason why.
p0peye wrote:Any team can send help or zone up to contain dribble penetration from Paolo and Franz, which in most nights result in Magic failing to reach 100 points. You don't need some advanced understanding of defensive schemes to see that, once teams got enough scouting on us, it happened frequently throughout season.
Do you actually have the data for this? Do you actually know if in the instances when the opposing teams played zone, these were the games where the Magic failed to reach 100 points, as you state? If not then you are wrong again and it seems to me that we would shoot better than 23% from three if they were playing alot of zone.
You dont need an advanced understanding of defensive schemes to know this.
p0peye wrote: When our role players have hot shooting night, which more often than not is at home, we typically do well - but many of them are essentially non-shooters and all of them are streaky. Regular season defense allows more hot shooting nights than playoffs, teams are laser focused and play hard now.
p0peye wrote:
We are struggling because a) our roster is flawed,
At 47-35 our roster is less flawed than teams with worse records. Whether or not our roster is "Flawed" is more of a big picture question and doesn't directly apply to this current roster playing the Cavs in this series. We can sit here and imagine all day what we would like the roster to look like. The Question im asking is what are the problems the team is having against the current Cavs team.
p0peye wrote:b) because Paolo and Franz have more developing to do to be a good 1st and 2nd option. We like the idea of big point forwards as playmakers, but they are not at that level to take on such role in playoffs yet. While we cannot speed-up time to address issue (b),
I don't necessarily agree with this, the idea that our guys are not ready just because they are young( as i assume you mean is the reason why they cannot do it "yet". The fact is our team's two best player are big point forwards and you have to take your talent any way you can get in the NBA so you make due. Are you suggesting that we trade Franz for Trae Young? This is a better idea?
p0peye wrote: we didn't move a finger to address issue (a) at trade deadline, hence the results.
This I agree with. There were clear problems with the roster and there appeared to be things we could have done to address the shooting problem. Difficult to see Mcdermott get moved for a second rounder to a team other than ours.