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Are we signing any undrafted rookies? Try to find the diamonds in the pooh pile?

Happy to see the front office take someone who can shoot and isn’t just a measurement marvel.

Credit where it’s due

Mcdaniels, Bane and Terry, that fans here wanted, are looking to be very late first or second round picks.

This is typical draft where people have too high expetations about trades and nothing happend.

Overall there was not single suprise, Avdija at 9# and Vassell slotting down to 11 are kind a only suprises.

Cole Anthony...

Not even worth talking.

Mauro Pedrosa wrote:Happy to see the front office take someone who can shoot and isn’t just a measurement marvel.

Credit where it’s due

You forgot to add green font

How high would Okeke be drafted this year?

MoMM wrote:How high would Okeke be drafted this year?

I already asked that before and only one answered I think. LOL My answer was top-10 at worst, top-4 at best

MoMM wrote:How high would Okeke be drafted this year?

I could have seen the Suns taking him at 10

MoMM wrote:How high would Okeke be drafted this year?

I guess it depends. If he didn't declare until this year and hadn't played meaningful basketball in 20 months, who knows where in the second round.
If we are just comparing him to this level of prospects. I would probably put him at our pick #15. He definitely goes after Vassell and Haliburton. Didn't fit in on NO or Boston. I don't know maybe Phoenix takes him, but I really have no idea what they were doing at 10.

He definitely made the right decision coming out.

MoMM wrote:How high would Okeke be drafted this year?

On one of the FS1 radio pre-draft shows when they were discussing Okoro they said something along the lines of "not as great a prospect as his predecessor at Auburn Chuma Okeke".

X_O_Z wrote:

yoyojw17 wrote:

X_O_Z wrote:Wow! we got Anthony Cole, okay...This is crazy. You guys have no idea, this was a top prospect in Highschool 2019..Him and Fultz gonna run it together watch and see.

The guy won at every level in his career and was the one that was always won best player in competitions....

... Has a bad year in a less than ideal situation....

And now he's garbage apparently.

I get it's not what people might envision.... But that down year might have been the biggest blessing for the magic and we could have just landed a top 5 talent.

The guy is obviously wired for basketball... And it's obvious it's his passion. Happy for this pick still... Even if there might have been others I wanted.

Welcome to Orlando Cole!

Man, and add to Chuma who was also a top 5 lottery pick before his injury and now add Cole who was literally top 5 pick this year if it wasn't for his knee injury plus with Markelle Fultz second year with us...

The Wizardly between Fultz and Cole will be crazy...My goodness.

He wasn't really listed as a top-5 pick. He was top 5 in his class. These are different things. The guys in this draft didn't all come from the same class. Your class isn't exactly dictated by your age and it is more relevant to college recruiting. Anthony was pretty old for the 2019 recruiting class. He is more than a full year older than Anthony Edwards, for example.

There are different paths to the draft and these players won't all hit the NBA draft in the same year. Jalen Lecque was in his class, yet he declared for the draft last year. Some players change their class if they think the conditions in a different class will be more favorable or if they just want to try to get to the draft earlier. Anthony certainly could've made himself eligible for the 2019 draft if he had planned out his future accordingly. Anthony is actually about a month older than Lecque.

The seven players taken immediately before Anthony all came from outside of his class and Hayes was only halfheartedly included in his class as he was already a professional and expressed no desire to play collegiate basketball. The only players in his class that actually jumped him in the draft were Okoro, Okongwu, Ball, and Williams. This sort of movement is really common. It's not at all uncommon for guys that are top 10 in their recruiting class to never reach the NBA at all.

I'm more exited about Okeke than Cole. At least he has skills that should translate in nba.
It's kind a irrelevant where Okeke would be taken if he was in 2020 draft. Most of top picks are one and done guys, Okeke did spend 2 years at college, and vast majority of tanking teams are drafting for upside.

Okeke's rookie year will tell a lot about him as player. What he shows now is what you will get for most of his career. Ofc, with some improvments and minor tweaks. Guy is 22 years old. You know the math, before his rookie deal is finished, he will pass mid 20s.

I'm confused about decision to not take at least 1 second round pick and draft SF.
Jackson, Iwundu ,Frazier. Lot of G league callups. 3 years, zero sucess.

That was always viewed as Hammond's and Weltman's biggest strenght. Find those lesser values and turn them into something ( Giannis, MIddelton, Siakam...) But their "magic" on Magic doesn't seem to work.

RookieStar wrote:Are we signing any undrafted rookies? Try to find the diamonds in the pooh pile?

There will be two 2-way players. But the Magic is not going to carry a rookie undrafted from this draft on their main roster. PBO Weltman has said clearly that roster slots are coveted (i.e. the Magic sees them as "full" already).

There might be a mid-20s "rookie" brought in from the G-leauge though. Although I would doubt it.

More likely would be a G-league promotion, and B.J. Johnson is very high on that list. With Iwundu out, Johnathan Motley and Paul Watson are other names we Magic fans can consider for the 13 and 14 roster slots.

..

Un drafted rookie plan...

Grab the 5 best pure shooters from big and small schools. Hold a 3pt shooting tournament like All Star Weekend...find the next Duncan Robinson/Kyle Korver/Set Shot McGinty

drsd wrote:

RookieStar wrote:Are we signing any undrafted rookies? Try to find the diamonds in the pooh pile?

There will be two 2-way players. But the Magic is not going to carry a rookie undrafted from this draft on their main roster. PBO Weltman has said clearly that roster slots are coveted (i.e. the Magic sees them as "full" already).

There might be a mid-20s "rookie" brought in from the G-leauge though. Although I would doubt it.

More likely would be a G-league promotion, and B.J. Johnson is very high on that list. With Iwundu out, Johnathan Motley and Paul Watson are other names we Magic fans can consider for the 13 and 14 roster slots.

..

I'm hoping for some rookie camp casualties from some of the better clubs.
But yeah, there are probably some G-league players that were better than what we had at the end of our bench last year.

Next years mock.


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basketballRob wrote:Next years mock.

Read on Twitter

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Isnt 2022 like a crazy talented draft? I know Bates is coming out then.

Hogified05 wrote:

basketballRob wrote:Next years mock.

Read on Twitter

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Isnt 2022 like a crazy talented draft? I know Bates is coming out then.

Ugh time to pump a breaks.
Early mocks for 2020, less than a year in advance had Hampton, Maledon, Mannion, Stewart, Cole Anthony, Maxey all in lottery. Not a single one of them was lottery pick.
Hampton went from projected top 5 pick to being drafted 6 slots before the end of first round.

And there are guys like Kahli Whitney who was projected to be mid first round pick in 2019, one of future athletic college scorers, yet who failed as player there, or, player Skin mentioned before draft, McDaniels, who flat out does not have nba body to play serious basketball any time soon.

It's way to early to predict 2021 draft. In 2022 floodgates will be once again opened. Expect bunch of "future Kobe... year later -maybe if everything goes right he is JR Smith" type of highschool projects drafted in lottery.
Diop, Eddy Curry, Webster,Darious Miles, Jonathan Bender and Kwame are flagship examples of drafting teenegers that who's teams would be greatful if they played college, so they can pass on them. All guys mentioned were top 8 picks, including infamous KWAMEEEE.
Kwame in higshchool was beast mode - 20 ppg, 13, rpg freaking 5,8 bpg, 2,2 steals a game machine.
What nobody tells fans about highschool basketballl is that 6'11 player most of the time there is guarded by 6'4 players. Rewatch Zion hype videos, half of his competition are 5'5, 130 pounds boys. Guy in nba has size of shooting guard.

Guaranteed there will be rookies that help a franchise leap frog us in the standings though. You don't go into a draft looking for the failures, you go looking for the next Zion/Morant/Luka/Trae/Tatum/etc.

We get it that there's risk, but gimme some risk over watching what we've had for the past 4 seasons. There's no stakes in what we have. It's day time television - tired narratives and the same old cast.

Bensational wrote:Guaranteed there will be rookies that help a franchise leap frog us in the standings though. You don't go into a draft looking for the failures, you go looking for the next Zion/Morant/Luka/Trae/Tatum/etc.

We get it that there's risk, but gimme some risk over watching what we've had for the past 4 seasons. There's no stakes in what we have. It's day time television - tired narratives and the same old cast.

It seems to me that what management has been doing is trying to compete and at the same time drafting or signing players who were once top players of their class and hoping they can regain that status back in the NBA.

Birch, Briscoe and Cole are guys who were highly touted coming out of highschool, Fultz out of college but lost footing on the next stage OR using analytics such as WARP (Bamba[7th], Isaac[3rd], Okeke [2nd] Cole [4th highest] with draft picks.

Its not really high risk moves* like drafting swing for the fences high potential picks, but more of acquiring guys who has that solid foundation but somehow got lost in translation, hoping they can regain that form.

Jury is still out on Bamba, Okeke and Cole. But so far, Isaac pick looks good, when Isaac is healthy.

It seems going for the Raptors approach which Weltman has said over and over again was an approach that attracted Martins to hire them. I’m sure WeHam wont last this long in the league if they think we are contenders with this team, but keeping the team in the playoffs and be patient, not trying to do quick fix.


*- was listening to the Giannis draft podcast series of Woj and Hennigan apparently admitted he knew Giannis was going to be something special but Henni simply didnt have the balls to pick an unknown player at 2nd overall.

RookieStar wrote:Are we signing any undrafted rookies? Try to find the diamonds in the pooh pile?

No, we traded our 2nd rounder because our roster spots are too valuable.