Official Speculation Thread ‘18-19’: XIX: Rise of the BIG

[thelead]

Every night in the NBA is just a plot to make me feel even worse about the Magic.

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We knew what we had but were too impatient to let it play out:

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[Ducklett]

Someone tell me something that makes me think someone in the Magic Org has some idea what to do with a basketball team. Coach, GM, PBO, the soda vendor. Someone..... somewhere?!

[rcklsscognition]

I know you need someone to pass but AG not being involved is as much on him as anyone else. He is just not present out there on offense. He isn't assertive and has no idea what to do with the ball. The dude was practicing fadeaway elbow turnaround jumpers during halftime of the Kings game. He didn't know you had to box out to get rebounds. He will be 30 and on his 4th contract before he learns the fundamentals.

I don't know how you speed that up but whatever we are doing isn't working. It's just taking too long for everyone we draft to put the pieces together.

I'm starting to wonder if unlike talented draft picks, these athletic guys who don't know how to play need to be developed differently. Maybe high load forced offense is what they need. Force them to put up 15 fgas a game. Give them individual tasks each game. Maybe we are too afraid of gifting minutes and creating entitled players. Can't hurt to try something else.

I'm starting to find this "assertiveness" crap really irritating. Offense isn't at all about five guys fighting for field goal attempts. It should be five people working together towards a common goal. It is really difficult for anyone to be effective when they are frozen out at the offensive end and it is really difficult for an offense to be effective when it is only utilizing two players.

I do not care what someone's usage rate is. I only care about how effective they are. John Stockton had a career usage rate of 18.9 and he didn't even crack 16.0 until his age 25 season. Team usage is the same regardless of the combination of players on the floor. You can throw any five players out there together and their usage will total up to 100% while they are on the floor.

I think Clifford has a primitive approach to offense. He has seen buddy ball and he likes it. It has never been more prominent over the last four years than it is right now and that is indisputably coming at the expense of the usage rates of whoever they share the floor with. Fournier, in particular, has expanded his shot selection this year.

Clifford also really likes Terrence Ross. He has said that the offense will run through him whenever he is on the floor. As a result, we have seen his usage rate spike this season.

This is what Clifford wants and this is what we are going to get until our front office decides to sack up and shuffle the deck.

Not using usage rate to help a team's offense seems primative. Usage is showing you what percentage of the offense ends in each specific player's hands each possession. This is the core of just about every discussion here. It tells you where the ball is ending. Extremely useful.

By balancing usage rates and the varying offensive ratings of the five players on the court, a team can achieve optimal offensive output. The stats show that, for all players, as the player uses more possessions, his efficiency decreases. What defines a superstar, in Dean Oliver‘s statistical analysis, is that he can shoulder a larger proportion of a team’s possessions with only a relatively small drop in efficiency. Meanwhile, the opposite is also true: players perform more efficiently when they are asked to use fewer of their team’s possessions. As a result, the greater burden on the superstar means that supporting players maintain low usage rates, allowing them to operate closer to their peak efficiency.

Not only can it help you fine tune an offense to make sure certain players get a certain amount of plays, it can also help you find out if you have a superstar on your hands.

[fendilim]

Every night in the NBA is just a plot to make me feel even worse about the Magic.

Read on Twitter

We knew what we had but were too impatient to let it play out:

Watch on YouTube

The problem when you choose someone who you HOPE to be a shot creator than someone who already is.

[BadMofoPimp]

He doesn't create but he moves the ball better than any other guard.

Fournier isn't lighting it up either with his percentages, just as bad.

Great. He can dribble. He don't pass and chucks while shooting 37%. That is not a recipe for success.

Do you think moving the ball means dribbling?

Also, again Evan shooting 39% and 28% from 3 isn't carrying us either.

I think no player deserves starting who shoots 37% and is known mainly for chucking shots most times it is in their hands.

[basketballRob]

I'm tired of seeing the same guys lose every night. I understand Vuc and Fournier are our best offensive talents. But we haven't done squat with them leading us for years. Weham get off your arsed and blow it the hell up. Everyone but Bamba can go. Tired of being competitive to miss out on top 3 lottery picks. Really blow it up this time for picks and expirings.

Players that I want traded by end of December:
Vucevic
Fournier
Augustin

Players to trade by deadline:
Ross
Gordon
Simmons

Players to trade on draft night:
Jonathan Issac

I'd like to see what JI, Bamba, and AG can become without Augustine, Fournier, and Vuc. This team has no chemistry right now and it's time for a change.

[j-ragg]

I'm tired of seeing the same guys lose every night. I understand Vuc and Fournier are our best offensive talents. But we haven't done squat with them leading us for years. Weham get off your arsed and blow it the hell up. Everyone but Bamba can go. Tired of being competitive to miss out on top 3 lottery picks. Really blow it up this time for picks and expirings.

Players that I want traded by end of December:
Vucevic
Fournier
Augustin

Players to trade by deadline:
Ross
Gordon
Simmons

Players to trade on draft night:
Jonathan Issac

I'd like to see what JI, Bamba, and AG can become without Augustine, Fournier, and Vuc. This team has no chemistry right now and it's time for a change.

but if that happens we might go from the 13th seed in the east to the 14th. No thanks

[Optimus_Steel]

Every night in the NBA is just a plot to make me feel even worse about the Magic.

Read on Twitter

Won't make you feel better but Dipo stole the inbounds pass to seal it....

[Xatticus]

I know you need someone to pass but AG not being involved is as much on him as anyone else. He is just not present out there on offense. He isn't assertive and has no idea what to do with the ball. The dude was practicing fadeaway elbow turnaround jumpers during halftime of the Kings game. He didn't know you had to box out to get rebounds. He will be 30 and on his 4th contract before he learns the fundamentals.

I don't know how you speed that up but whatever we are doing isn't working. It's just taking too long for everyone we draft to put the pieces together.

I'm starting to wonder if unlike talented draft picks, these athletic guys who don't know how to play need to be developed differently. Maybe high load forced offense is what they need. Force them to put up 15 fgas a game. Give them individual tasks each game. Maybe we are too afraid of gifting minutes and creating entitled players. Can't hurt to try something else.

I'm starting to find this "assertiveness" crap really irritating. Offense isn't at all about five guys fighting for field goal attempts. It should be five people working together towards a common goal. It is really difficult for anyone to be effective when they are frozen out at the offensive end and it is really difficult for an offense to be effective when it is only utilizing two players.

I do not care what someone's usage rate is. I only care about how effective they are. John Stockton had a career usage rate of 18.9 and he didn't even crack 16.0 until his age 25 season. Team usage is the same regardless of the combination of players on the floor. You can throw any five players out there together and their usage will total up to 100% while they are on the floor.

I think Clifford has a primitive approach to offense. He has seen buddy ball and he likes it. It has never been more prominent over the last four years than it is right now and that is indisputably coming at the expense of the usage rates of whoever they share the floor with. Fournier, in particular, has expanded his shot selection this year.

Clifford also really likes Terrence Ross. He has said that the offense will run through him whenever he is on the floor. As a result, we have seen his usage rate spike this season.

This is what Clifford wants and this is what we are going to get until our front office decides to sack up and shuffle the deck.

Not using usage rate to help a team's offense seems primative. Usage is showing you what percentage of the offense ends in each specific player's hands each possession. This is the core of just about every discussion here. It tells you where the ball is ending. Extremely useful.

By balancing usage rates and the varying offensive ratings of the five players on the court, a team can achieve optimal offensive output. The stats show that, for all players, as the player uses more possessions, his efficiency decreases. What defines a superstar, in Dean Oliver‘s statistical analysis, is that he can shoulder a larger proportion of a team’s possessions with only a relatively small drop in efficiency. Meanwhile, the opposite is also true: players perform more efficiently when they are asked to use fewer of their team’s possessions. As a result, the greater burden on the superstar means that supporting players maintain low usage rates, allowing them to operate closer to their peak efficiency.

Not only can it help you fine tune an offense to make sure certain players get a certain amount of plays, it can also help you find out if you have a superstar on your hands.

That was the theory a long time ago, but it was crushed by a lack of statistical evidence to support it. It seems to make sense in a vacuum, but the problem is that it assumes that a lot of confounding variables are constants; which they never are. Basketball offense is simply far more complex than that.

Aaron Gordon's usage increased in each of his first four seasons in the league, but his efficiency has remained relatively constant. We could attribute this to his offensive development. His usage is down this year; as is his efficiency. I suppose we could dismiss this due to sample size thus far, but you are going to find something similar for just about any player you analyze.

And if we are going to dismiss Gordon's case on the basis of sample size, then we have to dismiss Vucevic's hot start to this season as well. Right? Vucevic has finished above league average in TS% in one of his seven seasons in the NBA. Can you guess who has the higher career TS% between Vucevic and Gordon? Yeah... it's Gordon.

I'm not really trying to prop up Gordon or sh*it on Vucevic here. Gordon has struggled thus far this season while Vucevic has been pretty good, but our offense as a whole has been awful. What we are doing right now is not working. Buddy ball has never been good for our offense. We've seen a lot of of our guys struggle while sharing the court with both Fournier and Vucevic over the last several years.

And to reiterate my position for clarity's sake... the problem has always been that Fournier simply ignores the other three teammates whenever both he and Vucevic are on the floor together. Vucevic will spread the ball around, but Fournier doesn't.

[Mauro Pedrosa]

Trae Young posting 24 and 15 on a Win, while going through his rookie mistakes

[pepe1991]

Trae Young posting 24 and 15 on a Win, while going through his rookie mistakes

A LOT of it is tied how Hawks play.
They lead league in pace ( 107)
They are second worst offense despite it.

Kings scored 146 points against them, Memphis 131, Knicks 126.

When you look at games, he gets isolated and attacked almsot every possesion and his offense ,well 19 points on 15 shots, 32% for 3 being allegedly elite shooter isn't really all that elite.
On terrible team on defense he is dead last in def rating.

It's also who Hawks played against so far. Philly is only team among 9 opponents they faced that is projected to make playoffs. So it will probably get worst for him and them from here. ( especially after November 10th )

[rcklsscognition]

https://www.orlandopinstripedpost.com/platform/amp/2018/11/4/18061252/orlando-magic-aaron-gordon-stats

Alarmingly evident across the season’s first eight games is the questionable decision making that has come to typify Gordon’s play. He consistently demonstrates a frustrating ability to be in a potentially advantageous spot or to be moving in the right direction, only to mess it up with a poor read or a forced play.

.

[KillMonger]

It's crazy that it's so early and yet the season is looking so bleak.

Sent from my [trap phone ] using RealGM mobile app

[Orl_Magic]

Tough schedule ahead after this Spurs game, a lot of winnable games coming up. We need to keep up with PHX, they have lost 7 in a row.

[fendilim]

Read on Twitter

Yep! He is THE problem.

[BadMofoPimp]

Trae Young posting 24 and 15 on a Win, while going through his rookie mistakes

Good for Trae Young. I hope he has a great career proving haters wrong. Just because the Magic didn't draft him doesn't mean we have to hate on him.

[VFX]

Trae Young posting 24 and 15 on a Win, while going through his rookie mistakes

I don’t hate Trae Young, but if he wasn’t doing this in his situation in Atlanta he would be a bust. He’s chucking up shots with the greenest light imaginable with little to no help offensively.

[MagicFan4Lyfe]

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orlando-magic/os-sp-magic-fournier-vucevic-1104-story.html



Losers.

[pepe1991]

I'm sorry you don't like watching Vucevic. He's a very good player, and personally, I enjoy watching him play.
I think it’s a shame that they don’t let him employ his full skill set — he’s obviously an effective and versatile scorer, as well as an elite rebounder, but he’s also an excellent if underutilized playmaker, and his outside shooting is rapidly improving.

It’s also a shame that they’ve surrounded one reliable defender with four guys who can’t stay in position to save their lives, meaning that when one of the other guys blows his assignment (which is to say a lot), Vucevic is usually the one left holding the bag. That clearly isn’t his fault, and it’s silly to blame him for not being able to magically erase his teammates’ fecklessness.

I’m not sure what league you’re watching, but length doesn’t matter much in the modern NBA. Obviously, you need players with decent size for their positions, but when does an inch or two of height make a difference? When a player is taking contested jumpers, and if he was an inch shorter, he would’ve been blocked? When a player hasn’t boxed out correctly, and he’s fighting in order to tip a rebound? Sure, maybe, but these situations presuppose a scenario where this player has made a bad decision in the first place.

Honestly, being "fast" (if you define that word solely in a run/jump sense) is not that useful in the modern NBA. It matters if you’re driving, or trying to keep up with a player who is driving. It matters if you’re engaging in help defense. It matters if you’re trying to start a fast break, or if you’re one of the players getting back to defend against a fast break. But there are plenty of players whose sprinting ability is rarely relevant.

When talking about how the modern NBA is "fast," what is really meant is that it’s increasingly reliant on quick decisions. The slow game of the 1990s and early 2000s emphasized plays with relatively few moving parts: isolations, players backing each other down in the post, etc. The evolution of the last 5-10 years has been to a game which emphasizes spacing, passing, and moving without the ball to get open shots.

What matters most in this game? Not height, not sprinting ability, definitely not leaping ability. Outside shooting is crucial, of course… not only for guards, but for big men. Passing is also important, as is court awareness on both ends — the teams that can succeed on offense are the teams that create openings, recognize them, get the ball where it needs to go, and make the shot.

The correlation between offense and wins has been greater than the correlation between defense and wins for years now. Still, defense matters, obviously… but not in the ways it used to. Fewer players trying to engage in one-on-one heroics means less value for one-on-one defensive stoppers. What matters is adaptability and responsibility: you can’t leave your assignment open. This means you have to stay focused, anticipate plays, and be in position to stop them.

When you look at the big men who have succeeded in this environment, you see guys like Al Horford, Nikola Jokic, Draymond Green, and to some extent Kevin Love. (And yes, also Davis, Embiid, and Towns, who reside somewhere between these two poles, as well as some more inside-focused guys like Gobert and Capela.)

None of that first group of guys are remarkably fast; indeed, some are notably slow. None of them have remarkable length. Green is obviously an elite one-on-one defender, but the rest fall somewhere between average and below-average in that category. But they’re plus shooters, they’re plus passers, and they make good decisions. They’re not franchise guys, but how many franchise guys are there? 5? 10? The point is, they play key roles on some of the NBA’s best teams.

In the last 2-3 years, it’s become increasingly apparent that Vucevic has all the skills a modern NBA center needs — but that kind of player needs to be on a team that can also execute their roles. The Magic have a lot of limited guys and a lot of boneheads, and if one player is executing and the other guys aren’t, plays collapse anyway.

There are six things you can do to win basketball games.

OPPs comment from last game ( that got most thumbs up )

[darthmerrick]

Trae Young posting 24 and 15 on a Win, while going through his rookie mistakes

Good for Trae Young. I hope he has a great career proving haters wrong. Just because the Magic didn't draft him doesn't mean we have to hate on him.

Not like we passed on Trae. We had a chance to trade up for Doncic and we didn't give up enough and the Mavs beat us to the trade. The Hawks wanted Trae, who was going to be our pick. The plus was that Bamba fell to us. He was likely taken by Mavs if Doncic trade doesn't happen.