RealGM

...for being an incredibly successful con man.

He convinced Magic ownership and fans that he should be allowed to continue in his job, even though he has failed to add a star player through 5 drafts and 5 free-agency periods.

But more importantly, he convinced them to give him a green light to tank the franchise and oversee another rebuild, even though there are *already* six players on the *current roster* who were selected in the top 8 of the last five drafts, and all six were acquired by Weltman himself (4 via draft, 2 via trade). How many top-8 picks does he need before fans and ownership say no more tanking? It is the most unbelievable con job I can remember.

These six Weltman acquisitions are all on the current roster, and all were drafted in the top 8 since 2017:

Jalen Suggs -- #5 in 2021
Franz Wagner -- #8 in 2021
Mo Bamba -- #6 in 2018
Wendell Carter, Jr. -- #7 in 2018
Markelle Fultz -- #1 in 2017
Jonathan Isaac -- #6 in 2017

That's a lot of lottery loot for the second-worst team in the NBA. How does the guy who oversaw this still have a job, much less the faith of the organization to keep tanking for high draft picks?

It's even more inexcusable when you consider that some of the best teams in the Eastern Conference are led by players chosen outside the top 4.

Milwaukee
Giannis -- #15
Middleton -- #39

Miami
Butler -- #30
Adebayo -- #14

Toronto
Siakam -- #27
VanVleet -- Undrafted

Chicago
DeRozan -- #9
LaVine -- #13

Atlanta
Young -- #5

At the end of the day I just don't understand how there's so much patience for this dude. He's hit on one draft pick -- Franz -- and even Franz didn't have the kind of impact that really good rookies have on their teams' W-L records. But Welt seems to have everyone convinced that being awful is heading in the "right direction".

Orlando Magic, at average, has highest drafted nba roster in nba.
Lowest drafted roster in NBA, Heat, are 2-0 in first round of playoffs.



Weltman is Holmes of nba. Selling illusion to mass by never answering any direct question and acting smarter than anybody in a room, while selling bullsh*** wrapped in colorful paper.

NGL, had me in the thread title

Seems simple - The remaining ownership doesn't give 2 **** about winning. They're content to make money on selling tickets to tourists. They own several various franchises - since Rich and his wife passed are any of them winners? They kept the Solar Bears here just because they want people to come to their entertainment complex and it shows.

When I saw the title and who made the thread I thought wow has Magic Kingdom suddenly had a change of heart, but obviously not lol.

Look I do think Weltman in ways took too long to make a move. What my question is and has been since I've signed up to realgm is what are your solutions for the people that are against our front office? Most of the time I've asked I hear 'its not for me to say' or along those lines, but surely you must have an idea of someone from another franchise or within that can do a better job?

1. Delay inevitable rebuild for 80% of your contract

2. Start rebuild right as people start calling for new GMs

3. Receive massive extensions

Magic_Kingdom wrote:...for being an incredibly successful con man.

He convinced Magic ownership and fans that he should be allowed to continue in his job, even though he has failed to add a star player through 5 drafts and 5 free-agency periods.

But more importantly, he convinced them to give him a green light to tank the franchise and oversee another rebuild, even though there are *already* six players on the *current roster* who were selected in the top 8 of the last five drafts, and all six were acquired by Weltman himself (4 via draft, 2 via trade). How many top-8 picks does he need before fans and ownership say no more tanking? It is the most unbelievable con job I can remember.

These six Weltman acquisitions are all on the current roster, and all were drafted in the top 8 since 2017:

Jalen Suggs -- #5 in 2021
Franz Wagner -- #8 in 2021
Mo Bamba -- #6 in 2018
Wendell Carter, Jr. -- #7 in 2018
Markelle Fultz -- #1 in 2017
Jonathan Isaac -- #6 in 2017

That's a lot of lottery loot for the second-worst team in the NBA. How does the guy who oversaw this still have a job, much less the faith of the organization to keep tanking for high draft picks?

It's even more inexcusable when you consider that some of the best teams in the Eastern Conference are led by players chosen outside the top 4.

Milwaukee
Giannis -- #15
Middleton -- #39

Miami
Butler -- #30
Adebayo -- #14

Toronto
Siakam -- #27
VanVleet -- Undrafted

Chicago
DeRozan -- #9
LaVine -- #13

Atlanta
Young -- #5

At the end of the day I just don't understand how there's so much patience for this dude. He's hit on one draft pick -- Franz -- and even Franz didn't have the kind of impact that really good rookies have on their teams' W-L records. But Welt seems to have everyone convinced that being awful is heading in the "right direction".

Does it really matter if we have 6 top 8 players?

Currently as we speak, they missed on Bamba, and still questionable on Suggs.

But they hit on Isaac (when healthy) and Franz. I think they are doing ok with their drafting right now.

The only consensus number 1 pick we have on this team during draft time was probably Fultz and we traded for him when he was already considered a bust. Now he is a reclaim project. And WCJ was a throw-in in the Vuc deal.

Draft positions doesn’t necessarily guarantee stars. And there are a lot more to it than what meets the eye when you evaluate players. Player background, team system, opportunity, mental toughness, health, IQ, peer pressure. I’m sure there are more than what we know. You’ll probably need a prophet or a psychic to run this team if you want them to hit on every draft pick and show the list of stars picked later in the draft.

I know people are getting impatient with the lack of success of this team since Dwight left. But if you take a step back, Hennigan left a pretty low bar when he was fired. WeHam “built” a playoff team for 2 seasons. And it was clear, based on their interviews, and based on the comments of Martins that when WeHam was newly hired - they wanted to do the Rudy Gay - demar derozan Toronto approach. Wherein, they sucked, everyone was saying they should tank, but they acquired a player and things suddenly clicked for them. They were brought in to replicate that because management was hungry for playoff success.

They did a smart move on pulling the plug after 2 years of playoffs, rather than running that team back for more. They did a good job with the Vuc trade. Lots of hits and misses there, but I think they are doing ok (can be better if more daring), given the situation of this team when they were hired.



WeHam’s conservatism or the lack of daring Dave Griffin or Sam Presti moves that frustrates me, but I’m also realistic with the fact that they don’t have superstars or assets (Paul George, Westbrook or Anthony Davis) to begin with. And it is only NOW that they get to really build a team they want.

Almost had me...

I think the jury is still out on Franz/Suggs. I personally think both can be stars in an ideal scenario.
I also have a feeling Carter will also continue to get A LOT better. We have seen him progress immensely with a bigger role.

The difference with those other teams listed is that the talent on the court has variety and isn't only via the draft.

That being said, Weltman takes very few risks. Their draft record isn't good enough to play it as safe as possible every offseason.

They need to be more aggressive in trades and be more mindful of roster construction.
It's not about always having the highest pick (although it helps). It's about having those picks make sense on the court together while making the right selection.

They also have a very skewed timeframe with managing assets and getting maximum value. (Fournier, AG, Ross, drafting Bamba)
They have accrued enough assets now and have enough cap space to make a push at some point this offseason.

Honestly the "evaluation" season was a terrible precedent for them. Holding onto the core of Fournier, Vuc, and Ag for as long as possible was mind numbingly stupid and a complete waste of everyones time. That group was never going to accomplish anything and we are now seeing how they really were all 3rd/4th options (maybe less) when paired with competent rosters. To me that means they were either completely naïve, dumb, or weren't making decisions based on their own ideas.

Haha well played, that title thread got me storming in here full of piss and vinegar.

Feels like this job is just padding their pension pot, our dumb AF / absent owners don't care, and Martins is just happy he can sell out our seats to traveling fans to keep the books looking good.

So many teams done a way better job of their rebuilds

Funny to bring up Milwaukee and Toronto success when our front office were important parts of those builds.

We are year 2 of a real tear down. Well find out. Henry started strong and bailed on his plan with ownership pressure. Weltman seems to have the ownership behind him now.

Had me there for a second, lol. I agree though, I am tired of being told to be patient with this front office when they do the same overly conservative approach every year.

Draft a player in the first and then sell our second round pick for cash. Follow that up by just mostly re-signing people and keeping the roster as similar as possible as last years in the name of evaluation or whatever.

I give them credit for finally breaking up the Vooch/AG/Fournier trio but it took them way too long to do that too. They also could have agressively tried to upgrade that roster when they made the playoffs, but nah just run it back again as if that trio was somehow going to magically ascend into championship contention.

I’m just sick of how non chalant this front office is with running the team. No real agression to get anything done. I’m just sick of this strict draft and develop in house strategy we have gone for the last decade because this franchise has literally at no point ever been good at that. It’s literally led to the worst era of Magic basketball and has tanked this organization’s reputation to the bottom of the league. We would be the Kings of the East if the Hornets didn’t exist.

They are doing a fine job actually. The only thing the screwed up was not trading Vuc, Fournier and Gordon the very first year they got here. I feel like once they finally got rid of them now they should get 4 years to prove themselves. So in my eyes this is year 1. And that’s the addition of Carter, Suggs, Wagner and 2 first round picks next year.

Orlando should compete for a play-in slot in 2022/23, and could be a very interesting team for 2023/24.

The team is 1 1/2 years in a rebuild, that was forced by being the most injured team in the NBA.

Weltman clearly viewed Fultz/Fournier/Gordon/Isaac/Vučević as a contending starting five. And when it was clear that those five were never going to be healthy together, he cut bait. That was the correct call.

..

Magicfanatic82 wrote:Funny to bring up Milwaukee and Toronto success when our front office were important parts of those builds.

We are year 2 of a real tear down. Well find out. Henry started strong and bailed on his plan with ownership pressure. Weltman seems to have the ownership behind him now.

Deep dive into Hammond era with Bucks.

Hammond gets incredible amount of praise for drafting Giannis and people just tend to forget how he ended up with Giannis and what a mess of a roster he created before and even AFTER drafting GIannis.

For start, as 10 years Gm of Bucks, he peaked in 2009-10 when Jennings, Ilyasova, Delfino, Bell & Moute won 46 games, brought same roster next year as they fell to 35 wins. Next year he tried again similar roster and won 31 games ( 31-35 , lockdown ).

At verge of drafting Giannis he cashed in Tobias Harris to Orlando for rental of JJ Redick.
After being sweeped ( infamous Redick - Monta Elise- Brandon Jennings lineup that still hurts my mind typing down ) JJ Redick pretty much decided to walk off, so he tried to save any value and agreed upon... Sign & Trade ...where he traded JJ Redick for two second round picks. So let's put things in perspective, 19th overall first round pick after year and half was turned into 2 months rental and 2 second round picks ? Why this trade sounds so familiar? Because that's execlly same bullsh** Hennigan did and got fired for.


But, instad of getting fired, Hammond was once again trusted into continuation of Bucks ongoing failures. And he drafts Giannis. Prior to that he drafted Lary Sanders, who was very good pick, but over time found new green passion. Can't really blame Hammond i guess. Over this period of time he made two very good trades & transactions. He got Brogdon through Moute trade and traded for Brandon Knight ( fiasco ) but got Middelton as filler asset, witch later turned into much more than filler, but at times, was indeed, filler, he was 4th body thrown into trade.

So 2013-14 is here and Hammond heared about that epic 2014 draft class and tanks haaaaaaard. He tanks so hard that he sets Bucks franchise record as worst Bucks team in history. And he is awarded with 2th pick.... And Wiggins is gone and Embiid is on clock..:And he drafts....Jabari Parker. Allegedly because of injury consern.


2014-15 and Giannis is already defensive presence and nice offensive player, but Hammond still has no clue what to do in terms of roster contrcution. He sells 2017 first round pick ( Turned into OG Anunoby) for Jarret Dudley. He keeps selling assets to add mid season...Michael Carter Williams? Keep in mid, he has Giannis, nobody around him but Middelton can shoot, he drafted Henson recently who has shooting range of Shaq, he has just added MCW, Tyler Ennis( career 31% for 3) and Miles Plumlee. But just to make sure nobody can shoot, they still have Zaza Pachulia and Kenyon Martin.

How bad this was? In 2014-15, average nba teams were tanking 22 threes a game. Bucks were so out of touch when it comes to modern basketball ,that during triple overtime (63 min total played) they attemped 16 threes.
They finished season as 2th worst team in both 3FGA and 3% made.

2015-16 they again collapse. by this point Giannis is on verge of becomming allstar and all nba defensive player. Still it means apsolutley nothing for a team that burns whole salary cap on Greg Monroe, but is 100% fine with MCW being starting PG.

This is part where Bucks hit rock bottom in terms of logic. So it's 2015-16 and now nba teams at average shoot 25 threes a game.
Bucks shoot 15. They have young Giannis, young and healthy Parker, but they are still 5th worst offense. To make matters even worst, despite having Giannis and MCW, they are 8th worst defense because Parker and Monore make sure defense is swiss cheese
Whole damn cap space went on Monroe and Miles Plumlee who couldn't even share floor.
By net rating they are 5th worst team in nba, without even trying to be bad, they are awful team.
***** season ends with 2016 draft where he selects Thon Maker. Because he now thinks every 6'10 skinny player is Giannis i guess.

2016-17 ( pain is almost over) --- 42-40 record. Good enough for playoffs. Lose in first round. Again they are crappy defensive team ( 11th worst) and mediocre offensive team ( 13th), they have negative net rating.
This year is a year where they had: Brogdon, Middelton, Teletovic, Jason Terry, Hawes and Tony Snell in rotation, but still decided not to be modern team and despite shooting whooping 37% for 3 as a team, they were 7th lowest in attemps.


So quick wrap up, best season in his life as GM was 46-36 season with Brandon Jennings. With Giannis ( already allstar caliber by 2015) he never menaged to find any sucess. Most of his time with Giannis it was him doing Frankenstein's monster rotations and being stuck in 2000s in terms of building roster, mainly offense. He got few very good players via trades, drafted few very good players, drafted generational talent outside lottery but failed to do anything with it later, he also missed on multiple allstars ( Alexander over B. Lopez, Jennings over Holiday, Teague ...) . IN 2011 he traded 9th pick for John Salmons who was already 30 because he needed SG... On same draft, right a clock, Klay Thompson (11) , Kawhi Leonard (15), Vuc, both Morris twins were aveliable but hey... John Salmons!

But overall his run with Bucks is his Giannis draft and A LOOOOOOT of nothing before Giannis and with Giannis.
He layed funation for that roster, but over years never showed any capability of making final touch of roster to make sense,put all peaces in right places and after all- win games. Fact that he is now GM for 15 years and 46 wins is his best is pretty damn depressing if you think about.

Weltman's role is much much harder to gauge, because he was only GM for 1 year and since he was under Ujiri it's hard to imagine him having much freedom with decisions, even during that one year as GM, he was working as extended Ujiri's hand more than anything else.
But with Hammond, results are there. trades are there. HIstory exists. Among longest lasting nba GMs of last 30 years, he is pretty much only one who didn't won ring, but is also by far only Gm who never even won 50 games in single season. His reign puts him up par in names like such are Danny Ainge, Donnie Nelson, Pat Riley, R.C. Buford, Daryl Morey and Mitch Kupchak... How many titles those people have together ? 11,12,13? Can't even count. But rings are product of everything including luck, but all those GMs built sucessful contenders. Everybody but Hammond.

pepe1991 wrote:Weltman's role is much much harder to gauge, because he was only GM for 1 year and since he was under Ujiri it's hard to imagine him having much freedom with decisions, even during that one year as GM, he was working as extended Ujiri's hand more than anything else.
But with Hammond, results are there. trades are there. HIstory exists. Among longest lasting nba GMs of last 30 years, he is pretty much only one who didn't won ring, but is also by far only Gm who never even won 50 games in single season. His reign puts him up par in names like such are Danny Ainge, Donnie Nelson, Pat Riley, R.C. Buford, Daryl Morey and Mitch Kupchak... How many titles those people have together ? 11,12,13? Can't even count. But rings are product of everything including luck, but all those GMs built sucessful contenders. Everybody but Hammond.

But what does Hammond do? Is he doing all the work and Weltman all the PR-stuff? I never understood their working relationship.

..

drsd wrote:

pepe1991 wrote:Weltman's role is much much harder to gauge, because he was only GM for 1 year and since he was under Ujiri it's hard to imagine him having much freedom with decisions, even during that one year as GM, he was working as extended Ujiri's hand more than anything else.
But with Hammond, results are there. trades are there. HIstory exists. Among longest lasting nba GMs of last 30 years, he is pretty much only one who didn't won ring, but is also by far only Gm who never even won 50 games in single season. His reign puts him up par in names like such are Danny Ainge, Donnie Nelson, Pat Riley, R.C. Buford, Daryl Morey and Mitch Kupchak... How many titles those people have together ? 11,12,13? Can't even count. But rings are product of everything including luck, but all those GMs built sucessful contenders. Everybody but Hammond.

But what does Hammond do? Is he doing all the work and Weltman all the PR-stuff? I never understood their working relationship.

..

Weltman was his assistent until 2013 with Bucks, so i guess Wetlman hired him to return favor ?

I don't even know who has final words in Magic drafting. Matt Llyod still exists and he was promoted last year from head scout to vice president of basketball operations. That's same Mat Lloyd who had SOME say on Hezonja ; Payton, Oladipo, Gordon draft decisions and later Bamba ,Isaac, Suggs, Cole, Okeke. How does one person can be that bad at drafting but survive 2 front office changes and get promoted in 10 years while being incompetent at his job?



at 15:36 Llyod even brags that he had luxury to work with some of best nba scouts... So why you can't draft to save your life?
Also if anybody has enough free time to waste 36 min of his life to listen self-entitled mediocrity talk, feel free.


At 26:30 he is gashing over Chuma Okeke, he says he is 6'8-230 ( so our head scouts can't even scout well since Okeke is measured at 6'6 but whatever) than he says he ( okeke ) can shoot and it's important to add shooting ( never drafted one).
Than BS took whole new level when he started talking how Okeke bought them with hard working ( how execlly injuried player bought them by hard working if he could do zero basketball activities at times ,before draft ? ) Just..blah.

I assume Weltman is "mastermind" and Hammond is there to collect money before reitreing as returned favor and Llyod is clown who pretends he does something important because he licked enough a*** over years to keep his job for so long despite Magic ongoing failures to draft even C level star.

OrlandoMagic wrote:They are doing a fine job actually. The only thing the screwed up was not trading Vuc, Fournier and Gordon the very first year they got here. I feel like once they finally got rid of them now they should get 4 years to prove themselves. So in my eyes this is year 1. And that’s the addition of Carter, Suggs, Wagner and 2 first round picks next year.

Weltman said they had to make the playoffs so they would have value. They had no trade value when he got here.

Sent from my SM-G950U using RealGM Forums mobile app

The majority of this board was saying they needed to rebuild the summer they got hired but they said they needed a year to evaluate a terrible and limited roster....

Optimus_Steel wrote:The majority of this board was saying they needed to rebuild the summer they got hired but they said they needed a year to evaluate a terrible and limited roster....

and then took what, 3 years to evaluate it.

Coming into the job

Previous year: ****
after first year :yep still ****
year 2: yep, ****
year 3: ****. Ok, 4 years in a row of **** so now we'll do something

Weltman and Hammond never should have gotten that extension. They've shown no results since taking over and have fired two coaches when that's clearly not the problem. The problem is their propensity to draft, sign and trade for players that are always injured. For example:

- Drafted Jonathan Isaac: Averaging 27 games a season through five seasons. Accounts for 9.93% of the salary cap next year.
- Traded for Markelle Fultz. Basically got him for nothing, which is good. But, he never plays. Averaging 26 games a season through five seasons. Accounts for 9.42% of the salary cap next year.
- Drafted Mo Bamba who is averaging 57 games a season through four seasons.
- Traded for Wendell Carter Jr. Averaging 51 games a season through 4 years. Accounts for 8.08% of the salary cap next year.
- Drafted Jalen Suggs who played 48 games this year.

It's a front office that puts zero stock in availability. Instead, they're very happy to spend a large chunk of the salary cap on players that don't play. I'm fully convinced they don't mind injuries at all because it gives them an excuse to punt the current season and sell people on "when the team gets healthy."

I think they lucked into Franz Wagner and he's the best asset on the roster by far. The Magic should get rid of this front office ASAP before they trade him (and other assets) for a broken player on a big contract like Gordon Hayward.

A lot of it is luck. If we won the lottery last year we could have Cade and Franz with a chance to get another high pick this season.

Sent from my SM-G950U using RealGM Forums mobile app