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Though this organization has been successful in winning and developing star players in its short history. Outside of winning a championship, the squad has a track record with having tumultuous relationships/break-ups with former Star players like Dwight/McGrady/O'Neal and even Penny to some degree (though he was finished at that point).

The Magic are a great Organization... Though those guys had their faults, the organization always seems to manage to deflect the faults of the squad/team building right back onto the star players and the City usually just takes their side.

Though people could say O'Neal left because he wanted to go do movies and become a bigger star in Orlando. The Magic low-balled him with a less than flattering contract, and a poll in which most of the city didn't believe he was worth the contract he initially wanted. Then fans and organization got angry at him for leaving to an Organization that was willing to break the bank for him.

McGrady was traded away from the Magic due to him being "disgruntled". While the Organization signed a broken down Grant Hill in the 2000 free-agency (off major injury) locking them up financially for more than 5+ years. They Failed to draft well ( guys like Reece Gaines, Steven Hunter and Jerryl Sasser) and also letting go and trading guys like Daryl Armstrong and Mike Miller for inferior (Gordan Giricek and Drew Gooden) culminating into a 2003-2004 when the team was the worst in the NBA. McGrady the 3 years prior kept the team relevant and carried a rather subpar team to the playoffs during that time. Yet at the end of that 2004 season ALL the blame fell on McGrady for some reason and him being a "Quitter".

Howard in 2012 (quietly) demanded a trade as the team started fall into obscurity after their initial contender-ship. They made deals which hamstrung them (Financially in later years) to declining players like Hedo Turkoglu/Jason Richardson/Gilbert Arenas prevented possible big name free-agency signings in 2013 as the Magic could've reloaded. News again swirled around Howard his displeasure of Van Gundy, his possible departure, and the infighting surrounding him the front office. As once again the Organization AGAIN managed to dodge any sort of backlash to poor roster moves like signing lowly talents like Q.Rich/C.Duhon. Though I do agree Howard handled the situation quite poorly. I feel like he was villainized more as the Organization/Head Coach leaked internal information to the press about team affairs.

I honestly feel like this discussion needs to be had. Because though this team has created stars, they have been unable to keep them for long periods of time and there is this unfair hatred for a all of them (IMO).

So lets discuss.

Theres nothing Unfair in this hatred.

McGrady fled from sinking ship...
Shaq pretty much wanted go Hollywood we just made it easy for him so he could also have an excuse.
Howard saga dont get me started with poor Coward misstreated by evil Van Gundy and Orlando Evil Goblins Squad.We laso scared the Nemo off QQ and Dwight coudnt find poor Nemo.Id elaborate more and maybe I will but its 2 am here and I need to wake up at 6 am so adieu nn.

I think each of those circumstances is unique and there is not a connection. Because nearly none of those people are in those positions now.

Shaq was lowballed. Dwight was a pouty bitch. Yes we do sign inferior talent, but I am not sure that's because orlando has a pre lebron Cleveland vibe or because our gm and front office haven't build a product that's desirable for young men looking for stardom.

We draft high character athletes. Not great ball players. We don't sign guys with major attitude problems. We don't take risks as of late.

Personally I think our branding is too family friendly and not serious enough for the game. Our fan base is fading because of our irrelevancy, and we are more interested in merch sales/sponsorships than rings.




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~Snoopy~ wrote:Theres nothing Unfair in this hatred.

McGrady fled from sinking ship...
Shaq pretty much wanted go Hollywood we just made it easy for him so he could also have an excuse.
Howard saga dont get me started with poor Coward misstreated by evil Van Gundy and Orlando Evil Goblins Squad.We laso scared the Nemo off QQ and Dwight coudnt find poor Nemo.Id elaborate more and maybe I will but its 2 am here and I need to wake up at 6 am so adieu nn.

This is my point... WHY is it the fault of the Star player every time?

If it keeps on reoccurring with the same organization where these nasty splits happen with guys in the beginning or the middle of their careers, you have to start looking at what the organization is doing wrong.

These type of responses are just easy answers for people who don't look deeper into the situations.

Fleeing from a sinking ship isn't a bad thing. I don't think he meant it was.


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There has to be some level of incompetence in the organisation if you're having nasty splits with every star play you've ever had.

MagicStarwipe wrote:There has to be some level of incompetence in the organisation if you're having nasty splits with every star play you've ever had.

Yes, but not a pattern. I doubt weisbrandt is consulting Henny


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"Fifty percent of it was that I was selfish. I had a lot of stuff going on … movies and albums … that I couldn't pass up," he said. "Forty percent of it was the Sentinel poll and the fact that I was very sensitive at a young age. Ten percent of it was that Bob (Magic president Bob Vander Weide) and the organization didn't move quickly enough (to match the Lakers' offer)."

- Shaq

JF5 wrote:Though people could say O'Neal left because he wanted to go do movies and become a bigger star in Orlando. The Magic low-balled him with a less than flattering contract, and a poll in which most of the city didn't believe he was worth the contract he initially wanted. Then fans and organization got angry at him for leaving to an Organization that was willing to break the bank for him.

- The poll was of little more than 5,000 people - hardly a great representation of the city as a whole. At the time, that contract was considered an exorbitant amount of money league-wide, it wasn't just a slight at Shaq. It could have asked if any NBA player was worth that much and people would have likely voted similarly.

Shaq was the mistake of a young, green organization. That is the only one to me.

Tmac and Dwight wanting to leave for what they perceive to be greener pastures is not the organization fault.No one mistreated them. If anything it got uglier than it needed to because the organization got like the clinger gf/bf who didn't want to let go.

Dwight didn't exactly get a farewell parade when he left other places either.

You can go overboard doing everything and then some for a star and they will still go if they are not winning. See lebron.
You can play the hard role and they will leave. see us with Shaq.

I don't think there is any serious problem with the treatment of the star player by management. Not many stars stay with one team their entire careers anymore. How many Kobe's and Dirk's are out there? Long term relationships are possible but not probable so you do what you can to nurture the relationship but it takes both sides being willing to stay in it.

woosah wrote:Shaq was the mistake of a young, green organization. That is the only one to me.

Tmac and Dwight wanting to leave for what they perceive to be greener pastures is not the organization fault.No one mistreated them. If anything it got uglier than it needed to because the organization got like the clinger gf/bf who didn't want to let go.

Dwight didn't exactly get a farewell parade when he left other places either.

You can go overboard doing everything and then some for a star and they will still go if they are not winning. See lebron.
You can play the hard role and they will leave. see us with Shaq.

I don't think there is any serious problem with the treatment of the star player by management. Not many stars stay with one team their entire careers anymore. How many Kobe's and Dirk's are out there? Long term relationships are possible but not probable so you do what you can to nurture the relationship but it takes both sides being willing to stay in it.

Agree. Shaq is the only one that I think can be blamed on the franchise. Shaq never soured on the franchise. He just saw greener pastures. The others soured on the team and wanted to get out of Orlando ASAP- only to realize the grass wasn't greener on the other side.

Penny- soured badly and wasn't really an alpha ready to lead the team.
Tmac- the Grant Hill signing handcuffed the team salary cap wise and lack of improvements and potential for improvements let T-mac to peace out.
D12- just like the T-mac situation, he grew frustrated with lack of progress.

Team before player. Always. I would never ever want to be a team like Houston that coddles its stars and lets them run the show and receive special treatment. If a star doesnt accept that then they can leave if they like.

Just like in life nasty break ups or break ups in general are always both party's fault. It may be one more than the other but both always have some kind of fault. In the Shaq situation IMO it was more on the organization and lack of experience & believe it or not that one influence one way or another the rest of the situations because after that the organization was more afraid in some ways and would over pay some players just to appease there stars and got themselves in bad financial situations they couldn't get out off although they where done with good intentions. Like with T-mac besides the obvious Grant Hill bust which is no ones fault because there was no way to know he was not gonna heal properly and had he recover to his old self we would probably not be having this conversation, there was a lot of fault on both sides on the Organization for hiring a GM with no basketball knowledge and on him for letting his frustration of carrying the team get to him and thinking the grass is greener on the other side and trying to tell mngmt hope to pick in the draft when he should stick to doing what he does best play ball,because imagine if he had been patient and stuck around we draft Dwight what about a combo of young Dwight down low and T-Mac in his prime on the wing are you kidding me. You know to that he would have help Dwight to develop a lot quicker IMO. And last but not least the whole Dwightmare that is more on Dwight than the organization but like I said before they where also at fault. Him for definitely thinking that he would be a bigger star in a bigger market blah,blah,blah he was already a HUGE star and has never been one again since he left that whole big market scenario is laughable in this new age of the internet you can market yourself anywhere in the world and like I said he was already a star and the man which is what he was looking for the problem was he became to big of a star more than what his game actually was and to fast so his immaturity got the best of him. on the organization part the whole Van Gundy speaking to the media was totally on called for and they should have stuck up for him no matter what team problem stay in the looker room. I like Van Gundy a lot as a coach but he lost a lot of respect by doing that just as much as Dwight did for being a pre madonna.The whole situation could have been handled a lot better on both sides IMO!!! So al in all IT'S US AND THEM BOTH

They Failed to draft well ( guys like Reece Gaines, Steven Hunter and Jerryl Sasser)

They did draft Mike Miller in 2000 and won rookie of the year. Id agree they didn't draft the best but they at least got one good player out of it. I wasn't mad at T-Mac for leaving I would have left also. Hiring a Hockey guy in John Weisbrod im sure didn't help the situation. However I find it ironic how T-MAc wanted to play with an Elite C and chose to play with Yao Ming in Houston when we drafted Dwight. Call it bad timing or bad luck but I would have loved to see the two of them play together at that time.

GortatExpress wrote:

woosah wrote:Shaq was the mistake of a young, green organization. That is the only one to me.

Tmac and Dwight wanting to leave for what they perceive to be greener pastures is not the organization fault.No one mistreated them. If anything it got uglier than it needed to because the organization got like the clinger gf/bf who didn't want to let go.

Dwight didn't exactly get a farewell parade when he left other places either.

You can go overboard doing everything and then some for a star and they will still go if they are not winning. See lebron.
You can play the hard role and they will leave. see us with Shaq.

I don't think there is any serious problem with the treatment of the star player by management. Not many stars stay with one team their entire careers anymore. How many Kobe's and Dirk's are out there? Long term relationships are possible but not probable so you do what you can to nurture the relationship but it takes both sides being willing to stay in it.

Agree. Shaq is the only one that I think can be blamed on the franchise. Shaq never soured on the franchise. He just saw greener pastures. The others soured on the team and wanted to get out of Orlando ASAP- only to realize the grass wasn't greener on the other side.

Penny- soured badly and wasn't really an alpha ready to lead the team.
Tmac- the Grant Hill signing handcuffed the team salary cap wise and lack of improvements and potential for improvements let T-mac to peace out.
D12- just like the T-mac situation, he grew frustrated with lack of progress.

How is this not franchise's fault?

shadrock wrote:Team before player. Always. I would never ever want to be a team like Houston that coddles its stars and lets them run the show and receive special treatment. If a star doesnt accept that then they can leave if they like.

This isn't college. The stars didn't accept it. They left. We suck.


Business has to be a win-win for both parties. Why not lay the foundation properly.

Only person I will hold a longtime grudge against is Shaq. People can say we low balled him (somewhat true) but the only thing the Magic didn't originally commit to was a 7 year deal (which was dumb). They offered Shaq 4 years for like $55 million, with the contract increasing 20% every year. Stretched out to 7 years it would have been over $100 million. Why we didn't want to lock him up for the extra 3 years, only God knows. Definitely a misstep by the franchise. Of course LA ended up giving him 120 million.

Penny & T Mac. tried. Dwight tried. I can't really knock him for wanting out when you look at the moves we made after we had one of the best rosters in the league. I still don't like him but Shaq's the only guy I truly despise. There's no doubt in my mind that the Magic would have spent whatever they could afford if he gave them one last chance to match the Lakers offer. It all worked out for him though.

We have seen stars leave Cleveland and Toronto for Miami.

We have seen stars leave Minny for Boston and New York.

We have seen stars leave Denver for New York.

We have seen stars leave OKC for San Francisco.

Orlando is not special in this regard. But that is exactly the problem. Orlando is not an exciting place for a young person to live.

I'll ask all of you (under 30) this. If you suddenly had a once in a life time idea for which companies across the United States were willing to pay you a small fortune to come and build for them, would a company in Orlando be your first choice? You can go anywhere. Is it Orlando?

MagicFan101 wrote:We have seen stars leave Cleveland and Toronto for Miami.

We have seen stars leave Minny for Boston and New York.

We have seen stars leave Denver for New York.

We have seen stars leave OKC for San Francisco.

Orlando is not special in this regard. But that is exactly the problem. Orlando is not an exciting place for a young person to live.

I'll ask all of you (under 30) this. If you suddenly had a once in a life time idea for which companies across the United States were willing to pay you a small fortune to come and build for them, would a company in Orlando be your first choice? You can go anywhere. Is it Orlando?

The weather is awful nice here where stars can go party boating year round in shorts, so yes. I think some star players like Florida for that. Not all though.

BadMofoPimp wrote:

MagicFan101 wrote:We have seen stars leave Cleveland and Toronto for Miami.

We have seen stars leave Minny for Boston and New York.

We have seen stars leave Denver for New York.

We have seen stars leave OKC for San Francisco.

Orlando is not special in this regard. But that is exactly the problem. Orlando is not an exciting place for a young person to live.

I'll ask all of you (under 30) this. If you suddenly had a once in a life time idea for which companies across the United States were willing to pay you a small fortune to come and build for them, would a company in Orlando be your first choice? You can go anywhere. Is it Orlando?

The weather is awful nice here where stars can go party boating year round in shorts, so yes. I think some star players like Florida for that. Not all though.

-> Miami