The Frank Vogel Frustration Thread (Poll)

[PrimeThyme]

Coming in to this year we all had very high expectations for Vogel. Most of the fanbase and people around the media believed Vogel was the perfect coach for this roster. Most believed we would see our young guys take big leaps under his development and that our Defense would be a top five-ten defense in the league and become our identity. Vogel also preached that we would be in the playoffs. As we head into the allstar break at 21-37 its fair to say most of those goals have failed. We are a bottom ten defense in the league and playoffs are a complete pipe dream at this point. We have seen Vogel abandon the youth movement and have not seen the young guys take the jumps we were expecting them to take. With the DNP's we have actually seen guys like Mario take steps back. We are projected to win 6 less games than last year and have taken big steps back statistically both offensively and defensively.

Im interested to see what the general feeling of the fanbase is still with Frank Vogel. I see alot of people frustrated and disappointed but does anyone still have optimism with him being our head coach going forward? Is there any hope for him in the future as our head coach? Can he turn things around? Im wondering if theres certain things people have been pleased with him about this year and Its important we talk about the things people feel he has failed at this year. Or if people are pleased overall with the job hes done. I figured going into the all star break with only 24 games left would be a good time to do it.

[SOUL]

I picked "Hes been disappointing, But he should improve as the Roster improves.", though I've been very critical of him. I heard a lot of things that I liked before the season that for whatever reason he did not implement.

That being said, people need to stop touting his past as anything but that. We know he isn't working with a great roster, but there have been tons of lineups that make sense that he isn't giving much minutes to and he has always been a coach that doesn't know when to take his bench out, ask Indiana fans.

[ChosenSavior]

Good thread. I chose option 4 in the poll. I like most here was very excited when we got him after Skiles quit on us. He had some quirks about him I was not a fan of but I felt he would get the most out of our young guys and was even happier when he was able to convince Chad Forcier from the Spurs to come on board.

As the season wore on and I started to read stuff from Pacers fans about Frank, I started to get very worried. From January on, he has been a massive disappointment and looks completely lost in regards on how to handle this roster. We do not have the stability in the front office Indiana has along with a superstar like Paul George to mask his numerous deficiencies as a head coach. I am not very confident that he can be the guy to turn this thing around even if we are able to improve the roster.

[MagicStarwipe]

Option 4. Pooper Coach.

[PrimeThyme]

I think Frank has been disastrous so far this season. His rotations have been awful and none of the things he preached when he got hired has come to fruition. The players dont give him effort and he seems close to losing the team entirely at this point. The most disastrous thing of all though in my opinion is the defense. With the personnel and coaching staff we have this year there is no excuse for the defense to be as bad as it has been. No excuses for it and I have almost no hope for him as our coach going forward.

[ChosenSavior]

He said we had the positional flexibility to play big or small against teams depending on the matchup, but he never deviated from his rotation at all. He said he was going to use AG like Paul George and we did nothing of the sort to put AG in situations to be successful and understand where he can best get his shots at. He said he would never bench Elf again after completely outplaying the dumpster fire PG rotation we have behind him and yet he went right back to the bench. He said he would play through Vuc and yet never does.

I feel he's a coach who always has an excuse for his actions which to me explains why he is struggling leading this team. I mean he can't even get these guys to play with effort night after night which should be a minimum for a NBA head coach.

[Viper1500]

This team lacks talent, I don't see any coach winning with this team.


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[thelead]

Voted option 4 because he starts Jeff Green. I hated Skiles from a personal standpoint for this roster but he's a better coach than Vogel. I don't want either.

[BCS]

I still think he is an excellent X's and O's coach, but he is horrible managing his personnel and rotations. If he just focuses on plays and let's someone else handle the rotations, I'd feel better about him.

[The Real Dalic]

Voted 3, still think there's a chance that something can happen with him as the head coach, we also have a bad image at the moment for firing or losing too many coaches of late. I think that even if we do struggle with him here that we're going to be with him till his contract is up.

I wanna see what he can do with this team with another promising young player or two and let's see if we make another trade or two before the deadline and on draft night.

I think we all saw the potential he has as a coach defensively in December, we were a top 3-5 defensive team pretty much for a full month, he made this team great defensively, then something happened. Maybe chemistry with Ibaka and the rest of the team or something.

[orlando1214]

I'm on the fence between options 3 and 4. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and go with 3. Some of his decisions have been unbelievably frustrating to me though. However, he has had to deal with a bad roster that does not fit together well, especially with Serge. So I try my best not to put a ton of blame on Vogel, but he has not done a very good job with what he has either. I don't think he is a bad coach though, I think he's a coach that went from having a well oiled machine with the Pacer, to here where he has a huge mess and he's having a hard time figuring out how to fix it, which I think most coaches would struggle with as well.

The Green and Watson stuff is what bothers me the most. I hope there is a reason for it, like him trying to light a fire under Elf, who doesn't always play with the fire that makes him have good games. Or with Green, I think Mario's attitude plays a big role into it. So while it drives me insane, I try to justify it by thinking that we probably don't know the whole story. I want to see a big change over the final 20 something games though. With the Ross trade, and possibly more to come, hopefully he can start to get this team playing better. I don't expect wins, but I want to see promise and growth.

[anothermagicfan]

I don't feel like he's trying to win. I feel more like he's coaching a tank. It drives me crazy during games to see hot hands come out to cool off. Killing offensive rythim with a team that struggles to score is really stupid. What else pisses me off with Vogel is when we're down by 30 for the whole friggin game and mario only plays the last minute and a half. I seriously doubt Vogel is that stupid. I honestly think it's him being on the same page with Rob that we could use another very high draft pick this year and that we cant afford to let the Lakers be in the top 3 of the draft. It's definitely frustrating to watch. Hopefully we get better soon

[rcklsscognition]

I'm at 3.5 but voted 4 just to skew the polls

Coach after coach comes to Orlando and makes you question whether they really are this bad. Are they tanking? Are they being forced to play these rotations by management?

Now we have Vogel who has left us some real gems this year. Like his thoughts on Mario.

"Mario can play some PG. Mario needs to recalibrate. Mario is now our backup SF. Mario is now more of a 3/4 than a 2/3."

Great coach out of timeouts, the rest of the game he is a master of panic.

[PrimeThyme]

I still think he is an excellent X's and O's coach, but he is horrible managing his personnel and rotations. If he just focuses on plays and let's someone else handle the rotations, I'd feel better about him.

Its interesting you say that because ive always heard and seen since he got here that he wasnt a great X's and O's coach, Atleast on offense. I had heard it was one of the reasons he lost his job in Indiana. His offensive playcalling never puts our guys in the right positions in my opinion. Literally everyone on our team seems to be asked to do things on offense they arent capable of doing. For instance Fournier being asked to be a playmaker. His play calling out of time outs has been good but overall his offensive play calling and the positions it puts our players in has been below average in my opinion and thats one of the things I feared when he came here.

[3ddman23]

He has definitely been disappointing thus far. I was expecting so much more on the defensive end. I'm willing to give him more time, hopefully we can get some better players for him to coach up so he can show us if he really is a good coach. But so far very disappointed in his coaching this year.

[OrlandoDream]

WE just need our Paul George

No seriously this roster is broke. Bunch of players that dont play or mix well together, inconsistent lineups, new players coming in and leaving, and selfish individuals. We just need a leader.

[PrimeThyme]

I really want to hear the explanation for the one person that has picked option one so far. lol

[BCS]

I still think he is an excellent X's and O's coach, but he is horrible managing his personnel and rotations. If he just focuses on plays and let's someone else handle the rotations, I'd feel better about him.

Its interesting you say that because ive always heard and seen since he got here that he wasnt a great X's and O's coach, Atleast on offense. I had heard it was one of the reasons he lost his job in Indiana. His offensive playcalling never puts our guys in the right positions in my opinion. Literally everyone on our team seems to be asked to do things on offense they arent capable of doing. For instance Fournier being asked to be a playmaker. His play calling out of time outs has been good but overall his offensive play calling and the positions it puts our players in has been below average in my opinion and thats one of the things I feared when he came here.

I agree but that goes towards my point of not managing his personnel appropriately. But some of the things like asking Evan to be a playmaker I can't really get mad about it because we just don't have someone like that and Evan is most likely our best/most willing player. Elf is up and down and being a non shooting threat doesn't help him, AG is not ready for it, Mario is even worse, and our other point guards are bums. Realistically Evan is the only guy.

All in all what I'm trying to say is that he never seems to have the right lineup out there and in consequence we get awful performances on most nights. If he has the right players on the court, his play calling would be fine imo, but we just have that bad of a roster and he doesn't help with the rotations he uses. He doesn't seem to understand fit.

[OrlandO]

I picked option 4. Hard to be encouraged when he's done nothing to impress all season. If you didn't know who he was before coming here you'd never know he was a top tier coach elsewhere. You watch our games and there's no evidence of a team being coached well. None. It's really shocking considering his reputation. We are getting blown out more than Vaughn's teams... and at least two of those teams were constructed to lose on purpose.

[purpleswordfish]

I picked option 3. Here's why: the roster doesn't give him much to work with. Frank Vogel isn't one of the best coaches in the league, he just isn't. He's like 90% of the coaches in the league - he's about as good as the roster that he's working with. He was hired to take over what many thought was a playoff team, so expectations were high from both the front office and fans. So, the results have left people questioning his ability as a coach.

Personally, I never felt the Magic had a playoff roster and after the Ibaka trade, they're certainly not in that range. As a result, I think he's trying, but there's only so much a coach can do. Coaches that can make a true impact in the win/loss column are few and far between and even then, the roster is the biggest variable. It's easy to blame coaching because oftentimes we don't have the attachment to them as fans.