I have lost interest in this team, why? (25 year fan)

[fateis007]

Today, after not having basketball for 4 months. I realized how uninteresting this team is for me. I found myself reading my phone more then watching the game. Before you judge me, I am a die hard. I would watch 95% of the games of the year and goto many live games.

For some reason, watching the core of Gordan/Vucevic/Founier/Ross on both ends is just not very exciting and boring to me. It's almost like watching a product that has reached it potential (which isn't very good) so it's hard to stay interested, because the story is told.

The only thing that keeps me coming around is watching Fultz grow into a player and JI doing well. But a big part of me wishes they would just do a full rebuild and let these young guys make a name for themselves.

Am I the only one feeling this way? This is not meant to be a bash thread, I am just wondering if anyone else has lost their excitement for product on the floor after 4-5 years of the same core.

[Knightro]

Today, after not having basketball for 4 months. I realized how uninteresting this team is for me. I found myself reading my phone more then watching the game. Before you judge me, I am a die hard. I would watch 95% of the games of the year and goto many live games.

For some reason, watching the core of Gordan/Vucevic/Founier/Ross on both ends is just not very exciting and boring to me. It's almost like watching a product that has reached it potential (which isn't very good) so it's hard to stay interested, because the story is told.

The only thing that keeps me coming around is watching Fultz grow into a player and JI doing well. But a big part of me wishes they would just do a full rebuild and let these young guys make a name for themselves.

Am I the only one feeling this way? This is not meant to be a bash thread, I am just wondering if anyone else has lost their excitement for product on the floor after 4-5 years of the same core.

I mean... it was a scrimmage that the only two guys you have interest in watching didn't play.

Of course it wasn't that interesting.

[SOUL]

I think that's entirely fair but yeah obviously Isaac/Fultz will be fun to follow, how Chuma will play, how Bamba will look in the next few years. There's excitement but obviously we have to temper it.

I think one issue is besides Oladipo we've never had a true "top prospect" sort of pick and we've had to make the best out of the positions we were at. We're also traditionally conservative (I think by design) as a team. We bring in young players slow, we baby them, we don't know their true potential by the time they have to get paid (which is sort of smart in a way) and we're also a fanbase that likes to overreact/critique our young players faster than a lot of other fanbases so it creates a lot of tiredness with the endless vet/young player wars around here.

[KillMonger]

I think that's entirely fair but yeah obviously Isaac/Fultz will be fun to follow, how Chuma will play, how Bamba will look in the next few years. There's excitement but obviously we have to temper it.

I think one issue is besides Oladipo we've never had a true "top prospect" sort of pick and we've had to make the best out of the positions we were at. We're also traditionally conservative (I think by design) as a team. We bring in young players slow, we baby them, we don't know their true potential by the time they have to get paid (which is sort of smart in a way) and we're also a fanbase that likes to overreact/critique our young players faster than a lot of other fanbases so it creates a lot of tiredness with the endless vet/young player wars around here.

For me personally this is my biggest problem with this organization.....they bring these kids in and they put a leash AND training wheels on them.....trial by fire....sink or swim....we baby these kids so much i kinda think we're stunting growth instead of fostering it....i mean Bol Bol played 32 minutes in his DEBUT but bamba played 6 minutes today...is Bol Bol's cardio that much better than bamba's with Bol coming off an injury? and bamba iirc being injury free? idk man but i know it's going to be the same thing with fultz and the same with issac

i feel we did the same thing to AG as well, we tried to make him fit into a role more instead of playing to his strengths and just letting him play more free earlier in his career maybe that would've resulted in more growth.....who really knows though? i just hope this front office hits pay dirt sooner rather than later, i'll never give up on the team but it's getting harder and harder every year no cap.....

[shadrock]

For some reason, watching the core of Gordan/Vucevic/Founier/Ross on both ends is just not very exciting and boring to me. It's almost like watching a product that has reached it potential (which isn't very good) so it's hard to stay interested, because the story is told.

Yeah its almost as if Vucevic and Fournier are boring players to watch or something...

[Def Swami]

Not being interested in an exhibition game without Isaac and Fultz is understandable.

However, there is some truth to your ambivalence. I often think the ceiling of this team remains low.

The "future of the franchise":
- Jonathan Isaac: missed over 40% of games over his first 3 seasons
- Markelle Fultz: missed his first 2 seasons due to TOS; may or may not ever learn to shoot
- Mo Bamba: has been limited to 16 and 14 mpg in his first 2 seasons
- Chuma Okeke: redshirted due to an ACL tear

Isaac and Fultz are kind of the only hopes for a future, but they come with their own question marks. Fultz still struggles to shoot from beyond the arc. Isaac might be all-NBA defense one day, but he's not someone who can carry an NBA offense and has an injury history.

The Magic have a bunch of players that good to build with but not a single player to build around. And after all those years "rebuilding" not having much to show for it is a disappointment. Some of it is their own undoing during the Hennigan era. And a lot of it is poor luck too.

Bleacher Report just did a story on the relevance of the Magic in the NBA landscape.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2900927-a-basketball-showcase-in-nba-purgatory

Weltman and Hammond were inheriting a roster plagued with holes. Some of them were of the previous regime's doing—the Magic had spent two years fruitlessly chasing a low playoff seed—and others were, more than anything else, the consequence of poor luck.

Victor Oladipo, who the Magic drafted second overall in 2013, waited five seasons and two trades to blossom into an All-Star in Indiana. In 2015, the Magic had hoped to grab a Latvian teenager named Kristaps Porzingis with the draft's fifth pick, only to see the Knicks snag him at No. 4.

"Think of it like this," says a former Magic executive. "When you're building through the draft, there are two things where you need luck more than anything else: in winning the lottery, and in winning the lottery in a year when there's a transformational talent."

And others have noticed how little the front office have really done in their 3 seasons here.

"They've basically taken the default position on their roster," a Western Conference executive says. "They have not been aggressive in searching for chips. From a rebuilding standpoint, they've really done the bare minimum."

The lack of turnover, combined with some internal growth and Clifford's smarts, did allow the Magic to end their playoff drought last season. And, unless things go awry during the seeding games once the NBA restarts July 30, Weltman and Co. will soon have a second playoff berth added to their Orlando resume. But at 30-35, the Magic are in the worst place you can be in the NBA: the middle. They're far from a contender but also not bad enough to chase stars in the lottery.

Over the past decade or so, they've become irrelevant to the larger NBA story, more defined by embarrassing stories like last week's layoffs than by anything that's happened on the court. We're at the point where it takes the combination of a worldwide pandemic and a Disney World bubble for Orlando to rate on a national NBA scale.

Vucevic is a nice player but not a franchise cornerstone. Weltman and Hammond have made two lottery picks since coming in; one of them, Mo Bamba, has looked shaky through two seasons. Meanwhile, marquee free agents haven't seriously considered the Magic for at least a decade.

One scary thing this Bleacher Report article touches on is how much the Magic have invested in Markelle Fultz. It's made out to seem that they're believing that he's their ticket to prominence again, and I'm still kind of skeptical on that ever being the case. I enjoy watching Fultz play and I'm rooting for him, but it's hard to talk me into him and Isaac raising the ceiling of the team to one of an NBA contender.

"The way that we view him is he just completed his rookie season," Weltman says. "He's played more basketball this year than he's played combined for his other seasons in the NBA, and you know, we feel he's just beginning to scratch the surface."

"They think he's the answer," a rival executive says.

I hope there's more of a plan. Stars run the NBA. You're not excited because the Magic don't have any.

[SOUL]

One scary thing this Bleacher Report article touches on is how much the Magic have invested in Markelle Fultz. It's made out to seem that they're believing that he's their ticket to prominence again, and I'm still kind of skeptical on that ever being the case. I enjoy watching Fultz play and I'm rooting for him, but it's hard to talk me into him and Isaac raising the ceiling of the team to one of an NBA contender.


I hope there's more of a plan. Stars run the NBA. You're not excited because the Magic don't have any.

Eh, I think you're embellishing a bit on the "scary" as it pertains to the average Magic fan. What's scary is being content with Vuc/Fournier/even Gordon which leads us to a clearly capped 8th seed for 4-5 years and never fully handing the keys over to any recent prospect. I'm all for giving ample amount of time to players but I think it's pretty obvious where that core leads us.

Contender or bust shouldn't be the expectation of young prospect potential, I don't think, unless you had a legit top pick that is expected to do that. A Zion or a Doncic. I think most Magic fans are excited for what Isaac and Fultz can do but I don't think anybody is tricking themselves into thinking we can only do it with them. We still need that star scorer that can score in isolation/create free throws/is a 3 point threat.

[Skin]

If we don't do something with our core of Fultz, Isaac and Bamba then I'm right there with ya. Long term incompetency has its limits

[KillMonger]

One scary thing this Bleacher Report article touches on is how much the Magic have invested in Markelle Fultz. It's made out to seem that they're believing that he's their ticket to prominence again, and I'm still kind of skeptical on that ever being the case. I enjoy watching Fultz play and I'm rooting for him, but it's hard to talk me into him and Isaac raising the ceiling of the team to one of an NBA contender.


I hope there's more of a plan. Stars run the NBA. You're not excited because the Magic don't have any.

Eh, I think you're embellishing a bit on the "scary" as it pertains to the average Magic fan. What's scary is being content with Vuc/Fournier/even Gordon which leads us to a clearly capped 8th seed for 4-5 years and never fully handing the keys over to any recent prospect. I'm all for giving ample amount of time to players but I think it's pretty obvious where that core leads us.

Contender or bust shouldn't be the expectation of young prospect potential, I don't think, unless you had a legit top pick that is expected to do that. A Zion or a Doncic. I think most Magic fans are excited for what Isaac and Fultz can do but I don't think anybody is tricking themselves into thinking we can only do it with them. We still need that star scorer that can score in isolation/create free throws/is a 3 point threat.

i'm ready to turn the page, we squeezed all the juice we could out of this core.....i'm hoping the front office feels the same, we may have to ride out vuc/fournier by then bamba should be ready and hopefully by then we have a new coach as well that is ready to give the young guys the keys....who knows maybe we can flip AG into a top 5 pick or a legit scorer, i really like AG but i feel at some point we got to cash out on the remaining assets we got left.....i really like killian hayes, he has the skills of a scorer/shot creator.....i like edwards too

[Skybox]

This is an entertainment company. Period. Wins are good for business, but the WORST thing for business is irrelevance! Playing it patient and safe is losing sight of what this is to the world. This is why Daryl Morey and Pat Riley are great...they take shots at greatness. I can’t imagine what it must be like to truly believe your team is going to make a big move (because that’s their M.O.). How great it must be when a lottery team, say MIA at the time, is said to “ have interest” in the best FA’s even when they don’t have cap space or assets...and then, on occasion, pull it off! Swing away, MF’ers! One and done players And international leagues are a total crapshoot. Swinging big trades or somehow recruiting big names is the answer...it’s a stars league and FO’s have to figure out how to get their attention.

Drama is good in this entertainment business. We all meet here a lot more often than they actually play games.

[PrimeThyme]

For me personally this is my biggest problem with this organization.....they bring these kids in and they put a leash AND training wheels on them.....trial by fire....sink or swim....we baby these kids so much i kinda think we're stunting growth instead of fostering it....i mean Bol Bol played 32 minutes in his DEBUT but bamba played 6 minutes today...is Bol Bol's cardio that much better than bamba's with Bol coming off an injury? and bamba iirc being injury free? idk man but i know it's going to be the same thing with fultz and the same with issac

i feel we did the same thing to AG as well, we tried to make him fit into a role more instead of playing to his strengths and just letting him play more free earlier in his career maybe that would've resulted in more growth.....who really knows though? i just hope this front office hits pay dirt sooner rather than later, i'll never give up on the team but it's getting harder and harder every year no cap.....

There is absolutely something to this imo, particularly with how Bamba has been handled. I feel like the organization and us as fans have just been making excuses for him at every step of the way. I mean this isn't the first time we've tried to justify him playing low minutes due to cardio.

It just seems like we are scared to see if this kid can actually play or not. There is really no excuse why in year two after only playing 16 mpg his rookie year that his minutes would trend down to 14 mpg this season. We keep the leash so incredibly tight on him to the point where if he does play good or he does play bad it's in such limited stretches due to the low minutes he plays that it really doesn't make a difference one way or the other.

I mean there is no doubt that they are scared to let go of the reigns on Fultz/Issac as well, but at least they get enough minutes to develop as players and have seen their roles incrementally increase. Bamba is an entirely different story.

[Bakomagic]

I've also wanted to blow it up and play all young guys at times the past few years, but lately I've been thinking its been kind of nice to have a little bit of both watching young high potential guys develop in Fultz, Isaac, Bamba and getting to watch them make the playoffs this year and last and I believe that playing competitive playoff and end of season basketball could benefit their development.

We would not have been a competitive team without our vets (Vuc, Fournier, DJ) so I'm not mad at them playing out their contracts here, but I do believe that it is getting close to the time we turn over the leadership responsibility to the aforementioned young guys. If not next year than the year after, so none of the vets should be resigned or they should be traded when their contracts are expiring imo. Sure it'd be great to bring them back on value deals but I feel as if they would clash with taking a backseat to the guys they have been playing in front of the past few years.

Keep TRoss and MCW as they would accept their Roles in supporting the young guys taking over while still providing veteran role player leadership and bring in other good veteran depth/role players from other playoff teams (JJ Redick/Danny Green types) and use the draft to bring in more young players to develop as the current young crop transitions into the key players on the team.

I feel like this would be the best way to move forward considering where we are currently at as a team. If Fultz, Isaac, Bamba and Okeke sink after they are (truly) given the reigns for a couple of years than blow it all up and try again haha.

P.s. I have no idea how AG should factor in all of this haha.

[zaymon]

P.s. I have no idea how AG should factor in all of this haha.

Trade asset.

[Bakomagic]

P.s. I have no idea how AG should factor in all of this haha.

Trade asset.

I'm leaning that way, no fault of his own, good player just a fit issue with JI. I'd look to package him with our 1st rounder this year and try to move up into the 5-10 range and take one more shot at an all star level player (a perimeter scoring all star).

I don't care at all if he is terrible defensively. He wouldn't even have to be a great assist guy just a flat out bucket getter.

[Rainwater]

Today, after not having basketball for 4 months. I realized how uninteresting this team is for me. I found myself reading my phone more then watching the game. Before you judge me, I am a die hard. I would watch 95% of the games of the year and goto many live games.

For some reason, watching the core of Gordan/Vucevic/Founier/Ross on both ends is just not very exciting and boring to me. It's almost like watching a product that has reached it potential (which isn't very good) so it's hard to stay interested, because the story is told.

The only thing that keeps me coming around is watching Fultz grow into a player and JI doing well. But a big part of me wishes they would just do a full rebuild and let these young guys make a name for themselves.

Am I the only one feeling this way? This is not meant to be a bash thread, I am just wondering if anyone else has lost their excitement for product on the floor after 4-5 years of the same core.

I pretty much agree with the rebuild part. Should have tore it down awhile ago. Evan, AG, Ross, and Vuc are great role players but shouldn't be core guys you build around. With exception of Ross, they've all been together for 6 years now. Let the young guys play.

[zaymon]

Today, after not having basketball for 4 months. I realized how uninteresting this team is for me. I found myself reading my phone more then watching the game. Before you judge me, I am a die hard. I would watch 95% of the games of the year and goto many live games.

For some reason, watching the core of Gordan/Vucevic/Founier/Ross on both ends is just not very exciting and boring to me. It's almost like watching a product that has reached it potential (which isn't very good) so it's hard to stay interested, because the story is told.

The only thing that keeps me coming around is watching Fultz grow into a player and JI doing well. But a big part of me wishes they would just do a full rebuild and let these young guys make a name for themselves.

Am I the only one feeling this way? This is not meant to be a bash thread, I am just wondering if anyone else has lost their excitement for product on the floor after 4-5 years of the same core.

I pretty much agree with the rebuild part. Should have tore it down awhile ago. Evan, AG, Ross, and Vuc are great role players but shouldn't be core guys you build around. With exception of Ross, they've all been together for 6 years now. Let the young guys play.

I am failing to grasp what suggests we are building around Vucevic, Evan, Ross and AG. Literally every Weltman move suggests we are building around Isaac, and since we traded for him, Fultz. To me resigning veterans was a vote of confidence for our young core. If we didnt resign Vucevic and Ross we lose assets for nothing, but more importantly we are propably wasting Isaacs and Fultz carrier in Orlando, becouse no one is going to come here after we treat our own veterans like that (and becouse we are a loser).
Lets speculate that we didnt resign Vucevic, or even traded him before. Lets be generous and give us the best odds in 2019 draft. So we end up with Barrett, Culver or Garland. This year we suck even more Fournier opts out, MCW never considers us, DJ bolts. Our big prize would be propably someone like Ball, Edwards, Wiseman, Hayes. When we start to win with Fultz/Barrett/Ball/Isaac/Bamba? I say never.

[Max Power]

I can understand there being low interest in the team right now. I think there’s a lot of reasons for it. The state of the team still is kind of in flux, this isn’t the ‘05-‘06 team that was anchored by a rising star and a fantastic young supporting cast. There’s good players here but there’s a lot of unanswered questions with Gordon, Fultz and Issac, who are arguably the life blood of the team going forward. Vucevic has been great here. He’s been a win-win. Nobody expected his career. Fournier’s talented but isn’t exactly a team guy. Gordon’s inconsistent as hell despite being a pretty good two way guy. Ross was a surprise. But there’s aren’t the types you win titles with. I feel a little lax in interest too, and I think the state of the world currently plays a role in it as well.

[Bensational]

The team has certainly been a struggle to watch for entertainment at times, especially with such an offensively challenged team with no single player we can confidently feel levels the field enough to make us compete every night. Instead it's a lucky dip to see who will show up any given night.

Future wise, I understand their investment on Fultz. He has the talent to become a franchise leader, we just need to see if he can put it all together. This season he clearly seems focused on just fitting in with the team and helping them continue to win, and all the praise from coaches and managers is directed to that and his IQ. But if he really is the future, then we need to see what he's made of next year before we start talking contract extensions.

Same with Isaac, but since we know he can be a dpoty contender he feels safer - other than the injury history.

The problem with tanking is team politics, too. If you've got too many young bucks with something to prove, then there's no leadership and they cannibalize their teamwork in their efforts to become 'the man'. It seems like, for now, the team has delivered the charter that Fultz and Isaac are the players we're grooming for that, given Fournier's recent comments. At some point, we gotta hand them the keys.

[BadMofoPimp]

Magic ain't gonna win any superstar in the draft. They need to find diamonds in the rough aka Billups/Rip/Prince/Wallaces etc. Solid role players who excel in their roles.

[TheGlyde]

Magic ain't gonna win any superstar in the draft. They need to find diamonds in the rough aka Billups/Rip/Prince/Wallaces etc. Solid role players who excel in their roles.

Those bloody 2004 Pistons eh..

The exception that proves the rule.

Not since the 1979 Seattle Supersonics have we seen a team that gave desperate fanbases as many glimpses of hope that they could somehow win a title without a hall of fame superstar in their prime.