Magic GM Anthony Parker on "In the Zone" with Brandon Kravitz - 7/6/2023

[Knightro]

New Magic general manager Anthony Parker joined Brandon Kravitz on "In The Zone" on Thursday, July 6th. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for clarity and conciseness.

Kravitz: Welcome to the show and congrats on the new position. I’m sure the last 24 hours have been a whirlwind.

Parker: Thanks for having me Brandon. It’s been great.

Kravitz: Can you walk us through the process of you moving up the ranks? When did you officially get wind that this could be an option?

Parker: *Laughs* First, I want to say John Hammond has had an amazing career, first as a coach and then as an executive. When you’ve done what he’s done, you have the right to go out on your own terms. He came to Jeff (Weltman) and I and said “hey look, I’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s time to take a step back a little bit.” He’ll still be involved in the process, but this takes a little bit off his plate and allows him to enjoy life a little bit more. Once he came to us and said that, Jeff started having conversations with myself and with Alex (Martins) as well. This was a good time. John decided it was a good time, it was on his schedule and here we are.

Kravitz: Did you have a different level of responsibility for recent events like the draft and free agency? Did your seat at the table change prior to it being announced to the public?

Parker: The wonderful thing about our group is that Jeff Weltman has done an unbelievable job of allowing everybody to have a voice. From that standpoint, I don’t think much has changed. We all did the work. We all contributed what we thought and then it’s up to Jeff to make the decision. That’s how it’s always worked. From that standpoint, the role, the responsibility, the voice… hasn’t really changed much.

Kravitz: If I went back and told Anthony Parker the Magic player that you were going to be the general manager of the Magic one day, how would you have reacted?

Parker: *Laughs* I would have been like “I don’t know how that happened” because I couldn’t even get on the court at that point! But I would have been ecstatic. I didn’t know what path was for me after playing, whether it was going to be coaching, broadcasting or front office. I’ve had a lot of wonderful mentors and role models to help along the way like Matt Lloyd (Current Wolves Senior VP of Basketball Operations), Scott Perry (former Knicks GM) and Rob Hennigan giving me my first chance. Then Jeff Weltman coming in and giving me the chance to be the GM of our G-League team, the Lakeland Magic at the time, now Osceola. It’s just been an unbelievable blessing. All my friends and family and have reached out and showed their support. But this is just the beginning and I’m excited about the opportunity.

Kravitz: When we announced you were coming on today’s show, almost everyone who responded on social media said “ask him about the G-League” - how much did the G-League affiliate prepare you for this opportunity?

Parker: Oh man. It is the best growth opportunity you can have because you’re really forced to confront a lot of different situations. From your leadership style to the personal growth to the professional growth. How you run a team. Helping staff members. One of the things we always said in Lakeland is that nobody dreamed of growing up and playing or coaching or being an executive in the G-League, it’s a development opportunity. For everybody there, it’s a stepping stone to get to something bigger and better. To help be part of that process for others was the most gratifying thing. It was a tremendous growth opportunity. And again, Jeff Weltman and Alex Martins giving me that opportunity, basically from being a scout, it was a game changer for me. I’m forever grateful for that trust and the guidance along the way. Jeff has been unbelievable teaching me how to navigate all the moving parts that go into being a general manager. Certainly in Lakeland it was on a smaller scale, but that’s why after doing that job everyone has a lot more respect for the No. 1 decision makers of NBA organizations.

Kravitz: Do you feel like you have a good perspective on how to best utilize the Osceola Magic because of the relationship you had with the affiliate?

Parker: Yeah, I think it’s a moving target. It’s never a set thing. The whole point of it is to help supplement the parent team, but the parent team is always changing in terms of where they’re at in terms of if they’re competing or if they’re in a rebuild, those kind of things. It’s forever changing. I do think people who have coached and been executives in the G-League, there’s a little soft spot and there’s a little more understanding of what goes into it and how much everyone in the G-League gives to that organization. It is everything to you. Jeff was really good about understanding that and providing us support. Our whole staff in Orlando does a really good job of helping our guys out. Kevin Tiller (current Osceola Magic GM) and Trent Pennington (current Osceola Magic assistant GM) have done an unbelievable job, Adetunji Adedipe (former Lakeland Magic GM, now Orlando Magic VP Player Personnel) before them. The beautiful thing about it is that Jeff continues to promote from within. All of our guys are coming up and getting their opportunities. The guys who came before them are continuing to reach out and support them because they know what goes into it. It’s a beautiful thing from a growth standpoint. And also for the organization, everyone knows what they’re getting. The agents know what they’re getting when they place their players with us in Osceola. They’re getting an organization that cares, tries to do things the right way and tries to develop their players on and off the court.

Kravitz: The Magic had cap space and young asserts that would be attractive in trades, why was the approach to mostly standpat with the existing roster?

Parker: One of the things that Jeff has always done is doing this the right way. He always says we’re not going to skip steps and we’re going to grow our guys the right way. Right now the most important things we have to do is kind of evaluate our own roster and see what we have. We have so many young guys that are continuing to take steps in their progress. We don’t really know who we are as a team just yet in terms of how good these guys are going to be. I think Jeff made the right call in terms of continuing to play better basketball. Coach Mosley always talks about “leveling up” and that’s what we’re going to continue to do. But we have all of our flexibility still in front of us. We have all of our draft picks, roster flexibility. Jeff has really positioned us in the right way so that when the time comes for us to step on the gas, we will have the opportunity to do it.

Kravitz: What kind of role do you have envisioned for Joe Ingles?

Parker: I can’t speak on any of the free agency situations quite yet, but I can tell you we are looking to continue to play good basketball. That’s what Coach Mosley wants, that’s what Jeff Weltman wants. We want to surround our young guys with guys who can play the right way. Guys that can help us on the court and in the locker room. The important thing is to provide pathways for our guys so that they can get the opportunities they deserve and continue to get better and move our organization forward.

Kravitz: A lot of Magic fans are curious about what went into the decision to cut Bol Bol, can you elaborate on that?

Parker: We’re all fans of Bol. His story was inspiring and it felt really good to be a part of giving him that opportunity this past season to kind of jump on the scene when we had a lot of injuries. He was really fun to watch. I think part of it is just the numbers game. We have so many young players and so many talented guys that we wanted to give him the opportunity to him to go to a situation where he better showcase his talents and continue to get better. We wish him the best on that journey because he did some good things for us.

Kravitz: Will you tell your sister Candace to take it easy on the Magic when they bring them up on TNT?

Parker: Well if you know anything about our family, you know we don’t take it easy on each other! *Laughs* No, she supports us. She supported Lakeland when I was there and supports Orlando. She loves what we’re doing. If you watch her closely, she always gives us a little shoutout.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-the-zone-best-of-the-best/id1454384701?i=1000619617161

[fendilim]

Kinda boring interview. But thank you for providing the transcript.

[RookieStar]

First off... thanks SOUL...


Oh hey... theres that word again " evaluation". Are you sure this is our new GM? The answers sure sounds like our usual GMs. Lol

[eyriq]

I like this. I think it is tangible evidence that we are building a long-term culture.

Career progression and mentorship?
Growth philosophy?
Long-term vision?

Check, check, check

We are focused on building something sustainable.

[zaymon]

Hiring from within means we are believing in what we are doing. Very good sign. All the institutional knowledge is passed.
Its important to bring some fresh blood from time to time but front office development is similar to player development. You should not miss the steps. Weltman started his carrier from the bottom so he understands it.

[SOUL]

There are very obvious holes in the front office's strategy (2nd rounders), but they're building the team how I wish they started the last one (obviously having more draft luck back then would've helped too). The thing is, people keep grouping the Hennigan years and the Vuc-Fournier-Gordon years with the Franz-Banchero years and while I get the appeal to do that, there is clearly a line in the sand where a rebuild era was needed and begun again. In only 2 years, they have improved from being bad to a damn decent team that was competitive in a lot of games last year.

However, what I've been trying to word amongst the paragraphs of anger about this team that I honestly didn't see coming after the season we had is that we are set up well for the future.

There are obvious points of contention:

1. When is evaluation over?
2. When should we make moves to start improving the team aggressively?
3. What if they extend players and create logjams?

For 1, I think evaluation is in different stages for many players. We've found that Cole is an ideal sixth man, we're seeing that Fultz is a solid starter but may not be anything more than that if his shot doesn't improve, we're seeing that WCJ has become a reliable, dependable big, and we've seen Suggs start very slow but have that "it" factor on defense that all playoff teams need in a guard.. even if he doesn't become what people thought he should become. It also showed them that they didn't feel comfortable with any of them as the future yet.

Most of those things we would not have known last year at all if we didn't let it play out, and that information is valuable. And guess what? Some weren't even cool with evaluating last year, which is crazy to me considering we were literally off of 1 year of rebuilding.

For 2, I liken us to a team like the Knicks.. but a bit different. They were also a team that were in a playoff drought for a long time, started becoming decent last the last 2-3 years but have a different dynamic with Brunson now. They have the Villanova connection like we have the Michigan connection, they're a team that hasn't done a lot of aggressive movements in the draft (slightly more in FA last year, but still, their roster has had some tweaks but nothing huge), but I think our upside is way higher.

The difference is, they had RJ and Randle as building blocks before they found their Brunson, and we have Franz and Paolo as our building blocks before we find our own Brunson, whoever that is, whatever role he is, I think he will be coming in the next year.

For 3, it just doesn't make sense to worry about it. I see people overrate and underrate player ceilings all the time, and someone who you think is/isn't part of the future suddenly becomes a player you never saw coming. Mikal Bridges was seen as a super luxury connector piece/top tier role guy, now he possibly can be a #2 guy on a winning roster. We see guys in baseball like Alek Manoah go from Cy Young candidate to getting demoted to AAA baseball in a year. Brunson was unplayable in the playoffs for Dallas one year and now he was the Knicks' hero.

I'd rather lose a bit of value from overevaluating than move guys all willy nilly because we decided a year or two is too long and we need to make our Ibaka move again. I get that people may not trust the front office to make a move at the right time, or they may extend players and things won't make sense.. but for me I want to see what happens first before bringing out any pitchforks.

[basketballRob]

I remember someone sitting next Weltman during draft workouts. I didn't know who it was at the time. Now I know it was Parker.

Sent from my SM-G781U using RealGM mobile app

[pepe1991]

They took over after 2016-17 season.
Bottom feeders from that era:
Brooklyn- lost in 7 games on lenght of a foot of Durant's shoe to eventual champion Bucks in second round
Suns- played NBA finals
Lakers- won championship
76ers- pretender, but passed first round of playoffs 5 times out of 6
Knicks- passed first round of playoffs
Magic- won 2 playoff games . Yeey.

Maybe objective criticsm about their job isn't fact that they don't use second round picks that nobody really cares about but fact they aren't good at their jobs?

6 years later, 7 lottery picks later, your team PROBABLY shouldn't be still projected to miss playoffs after you have won 0 playoff series in past 6 years and menaged to miss playoffs 4/6 times?

And your peak in all this was 42-40 season?

[Howard Mass]

Thanks for the recap Knightro.

[SOUL]

6 years later, 7 lottery picks later, your team PROBABLY shouldn't be still projected to miss playoffs after you have won 0 playoff series in past 6 years and menaged to miss playoffs 4/6 times?

Gotta set the scene here. Can't just bring up time periods with no context or nuance. This is about unbiased as I could be since I was fine with Hennigan until the dumb trades + hires, and I am fine with Weham until they do something really stupid.

At that point (Hennigan's exit), ownership wanted to win. Anybody could've been a GM and they were going to attempt to win with that team with Clifford at the helm. Team was basically in shambles and not in an enviable place. Had a decent team one playoff year, below average record the next and got in because of virtue of being in the east - and imprint of their actual team was only Bamba and Isaac in the draft + some trades.

Their actual imprint was the teardown. Yes, that's the easiest part. Yes, it means you are still losing.. but if you think taking a **** in a dumpster and taking a **** on the floor is a mansion is the same thing, then sure, you can say we still are losing today.. with entirely better surroundings to actually BE good and sustain it. If you're not winning, at least put yourself in a better position to win coming up.

2017-2018 - (miss playoffs with 90% Hennigan team)
2018-2019 - (make playoffs with decent team, still low ceiling)
2019-2020 - (make playoffs with meh team, under .500 record)
-- ownership realizes oh ****.. maybe it's bad to keep eggs in the basket of 3rd-5th options) --
2020-2021 - (team is who we thought they were, get great value for Vuc, tank half the season)
2021-2022 - (1st year of getting draft picks from tanking, hoping for #1 pick)
2022-2023 - (2nd year get Paolo, have two studs, all our picks, trade options available, team was surprisingly competitive to the point that people were getting mad we almost made the play-in even with a month of like 7 healthy players)

It honestly doesn't even feel like we tanked this season until the last week or so, the rest was competitive + early injuries but not losing on purpose. We've been "tanking" MAYBE 2 seasons but realistically, 1 and a half.

So, my question to you is:

1. Where is the big misstep in all of this? Do you continue to compete with that Vuc team for hollow 1st round exits? I remember having debates with you and others at the time of the merits of chasing a 1st round high. Yes, you can "retool" like the Raptors, Pacers, Jazz do - but the value they started with was way different. If Vuc hadn't become an all-star, we'd have very little value.

2. Is it not a natural progression of young guys to be bad (21-22) to decent (22-23) to hopefully solid/good (23-24) with smart acquisitions over the course of the next year? Where is all of the panic coming from?

3. What would you do differently?

[Fortune Teller]

Parker delivered his Weltman-esque talking points like a seasoned pro. Kravitz actually asked a good, specific question, and Parker gave him a vague, political answer:

Kravitz: The Magic had cap space and young assets that would be attractive in trades, why was the approach to mostly stand pat with the existing roster?

Parker: One of the things that Jeff has always done is doing this the right way. He always says we’re not going to skip steps and we’re going to grow our guys the right way. Right now the most important things we have to do is kind of evaluate our own roster and see what we have. We have so many young guys that are continuing to take steps in their progress. We don’t really know who we are as a team just yet in terms of how good these guys are going to be. I think Jeff made the right call in terms of continuing to play better basketball. Coach Mosley always talks about “leveling up” and that’s what we’re going to continue to do. But we have all of our flexibility still in front of us. We have all of our draft picks, roster flexibility. Jeff has really positioned us in the right way so that when the time comes for us to step on the gas, we will have the opportunity to do it.

Obviously, this is the same thing this front office has been saying for years, and on a purely theoretical level it makes sense. Who can argue with the great "we're not going to skip steps" line? It's a classic.

If Parker were on the witness stand, however, the follow-up questions write themselves:

Would bringing in a quality veteran or two have impeded the growth of the young guys, or helped it?

How long will it take to evaluate this roster, and do you even have that long in today's NBA before your young stars want to win games?

Fultz, Carter, Anthony, Isaac, Okeke have all been on the roster for at least 3 years, going into at least their 4th. Do you have an idea what these players are going to be, or do you still need to evaluate them?

If the focus is on growth and improvement of the young players, how do you reconcile the current depth chart in the backcourt, where there are only so many minutes available?

2023 marks the 7th free agency summer for this front office, and it looks like it will be the 7th summer where the Magic passed on free agents. We've also been in the draft lottery 5 of this FO's 7 years, including the last 3. Is this model working? Or does the front office need to distinguish between "skipping steps" and finding other ways to add complementary talent?

With Franz and Paolo exceeding expectations, the word on the street was that the Magic were ready to "step on the gas", at least a little bit, this summer. What changed?

[MartinsIzAfraud]

6 years later, 7 lottery picks later, your team PROBABLY shouldn't be still projected to miss playoffs after you have won 0 playoff series in past 6 years and menaged to miss playoffs 4/6 times?

Gotta set the scene here. Can't just bring up time periods with no context or nuance. This is about unbiased as I could be since I was fine with Hennigan until the dumb trades + hires, and I am fine with Weham until they do something really stupid.

At that point (Hennigan's exit), ownership wanted to win. Anybody could've been a GM and they were going to attempt to win with that team with Clifford at the helm. Team was basically in shambles and not in an enviable place. Had a decent team one playoff year, below average record the next and got in because of virtue of being in the east - and imprint of their actual team was only Bamba and Isaac in the draft + some trades.

Their actual imprint was the teardown. Yes, that's the easiest part. Yes, it means you are still losing.. but if you think taking a **** in a dumpster and taking a **** on the floor is a mansion is the same thing, then sure, you can say we still are losing today.. with entirely better surroundings to actually BE good and sustain it. If you're not winning, at least put yourself in a better position to win coming up.

2017-2018 - (miss playoffs with 90% Hennigan team)
2018-2019 - (make playoffs with decent team, still low ceiling)
2019-2020 - (make playoffs with meh team, under .500 record)
-- ownership realizes oh ****.. maybe it's bad to keep eggs in the basket of 3rd-5th options) --
2020-2021 - (team is who we thought they were, get great value for Vuc, tank half the season)
2021-2022 - (1st year of getting draft picks from tanking, hoping for #1 pick)
2022-2023 - (2nd year get Paolo, have two studs, all our picks, trade options available, team was surprisingly competitive to the point that people were getting mad we almost made the play-in even with a month of like 7 healthy players)

It honestly doesn't even feel like we tanked this season until the last week or so, the rest was competitive + early injuries but not losing on purpose. We've been "tanking" MAYBE 2 seasons but realistically, 1 and a half.

So, my question to you is:

1. Where is the big misstep in all of this? Do you continue to compete with that Vuc team for hollow 1st round exits? I remember having debates with you and others at the time of the merits of chasing a 1st round high. Yes, you can "retool" like the Raptors, Pacers, Jazz do - but the value they started with was way different. If Vuc hadn't become an all-star, we'd have very little value.

2. Is it not a natural progression of young guys to be bad (21-22) to decent (22-23) to hopefully solid/good (23-24) with smart acquisitions over the course of the next year? Where is all of the panic coming from?

3. What would you do differently?

It obviously doesn't help when 2 of your lotto picks have been absolute poop & another mid 1st is a G League guy. One due to injuries, the FO can't be blamed for and 1 for an extremely lackadaisical work ethic which was one of his red flags coming into the draft. Okeke just doesn't have an NBA game and that's ok you're going to swing and miss.

Issue is 3 of your 1st round picks in 3 years have provided the same thing as a traded 2nd round pick in 2030. That's not great bob and fans are going to get frustrated for sure. I'm very interested to see how this year plays out and really hope they're gunning to take the next step into the proper playoffs (play-ins don't count) next year after a trade deadline, draft & FA pulls.

[89Magicfan]

Parker delivered his Weltman-esque talking points like a seasoned pro. Kravitz actually asked a good, specific question, and Parker gave him a vague, political answer:

Kravitz: The Magic had cap space and young assets that would be attractive in trades, why was the approach to mostly stand pat with the existing roster?

Parker: One of the things that Jeff has always done is doing this the right way. He always says we’re not going to skip steps and we’re going to grow our guys the right way. Right now the most important things we have to do is kind of evaluate our own roster and see what we have. We have so many young guys that are continuing to take steps in their progress. We don’t really know who we are as a team just yet in terms of how good these guys are going to be. I think Jeff made the right call in terms of continuing to play better basketball. Coach Mosley always talks about “leveling up” and that’s what we’re going to continue to do. But we have all of our flexibility still in front of us. We have all of our draft picks, roster flexibility. Jeff has really positioned us in the right way so that when the time comes for us to step on the gas, we will have the opportunity to do it.

Obviously, this is the same thing this front office has been saying for years, and on a purely theoretical level it makes sense. Who can argue with the great "we're not going to skip steps" line? It's a classic.

If Parker were on the witness stand, however, the follow-up questions write themselves:

Would bringing in a quality veteran or two have impeded the growth of the young guys, or helped it?

How long will it take to evaluate this roster, and do you even have that long in today's NBA before your young stars want to win games?

Fultz, Carter, Anthony, Isaac, Okeke have all been on the roster for at least 3 years, going into at least their 4th. Do you have an idea what these players are going to be, or do you still need to evaluate them?

If the focus is on growth and improvement of the young players, how do you reconcile the current depth chart in the backcourt, where there are only so many minutes available?

2023 marks the 7th free agency summer for this front office, and it looks like it will be the 7th summer where the Magic passed on free agents. We've also been in the draft lottery 5 of this FO's 7 years, including the last 3. Is this model working? Or does the front office need to distinguish between "skipping steps" and finding other ways to add complementary talent?

With Franz and Paolo exceeding expectations, the word on the street was that the Magic were ready to "step on the gas", at least a little bit, this summer. What changed?

Just my opinion but I don’t think Black was their guy. I don’t think he was even number 2.

My guess is they wanted to go into the draft being aggressive. They didn’t get top 3 so they tried hard to trade up. Didn’t happen so now they have to “evaluate” and see what’s the next step. See who or what opportunities become available during the season.

[Knightro]

First off... thanks SOUL...


Oh hey... theres that word again " evaluation". Are you sure this is our new GM? The answers sure sounds like our usual GMs. Lol

What are you thanking him for?

[pepe1991]

6 years later, 7 lottery picks later, your team PROBABLY shouldn't be still projected to miss playoffs after you have won 0 playoff series in past 6 years and menaged to miss playoffs 4/6 times?

Gotta set the scene here. Can't just bring up time periods with no context or nuance. This is about unbiased as I could be since I was fine with Hennigan until the dumb trades + hires, and I am fine with Weham until they do something really stupid.

At that point (Hennigan's exit), ownership wanted to win. Anybody could've been a GM and they were going to attempt to win with that team with Clifford at the helm. Team was basically in shambles and not in an enviable place. Had a decent team one playoff year, below average record the next and got in because of virtue of being in the east - and imprint of their actual team was only Bamba and Isaac in the draft + some trades.

Their actual imprint was the teardown. Yes, that's the easiest part. Yes, it means you are still losing.. but if you think taking a **** in a dumpster and taking a **** on the floor is a mansion is the same thing, then sure, you can say we still are losing today.. with entirely better surroundings to actually BE good and sustain it. If you're not winning, at least put yourself in a better position to win coming up.

2017-2018 - (miss playoffs with 90% Hennigan team)
2018-2019 - (make playoffs with decent team, still low ceiling)
2019-2020 - (make playoffs with meh team, under .500 record)
-- ownership realizes oh ****.. maybe it's bad to keep eggs in the basket of 3rd-5th options) --
2020-2021 - (team is who we thought they were, get great value for Vuc, tank half the season)
2021-2022 - (1st year of getting draft picks from tanking, hoping for #1 pick)
2022-2023 - (2nd year get Paolo, have two studs, all our picks, trade options available, team was surprisingly competitive to the point that people were getting mad we almost made the play-in even with a month of like 7 healthy players)

It honestly doesn't even feel like we tanked this season until the last week or so, the rest was competitive + early injuries but not losing on purpose. We've been "tanking" MAYBE 2 seasons but realistically, 1 and a half.

So, my question to you is:

1. Where is the big misstep in all of this? Do you continue to compete with that Vuc team for hollow 1st round exits? I remember having debates with you and others at the time of the merits of chasing a 1st round high. Yes, you can "retool" like the Raptors, Pacers, Jazz do - but the value they started with was way different. If Vuc hadn't become an all-star, we'd have very little value.

2. Is it not a natural progression of young guys to be bad (21-22) to decent (22-23) to hopefully solid/good (23-24) with smart acquisitions over the course of the next year? Where is all of the panic coming from?

3. What would you do differently?

Don't take this too personally but you are really just a homer. You always find need to defend just about everybody and anybody in front office, players , coaches, and whoever is active on roster and that dates back since a day i joined this forum, near 7 years now.

No, they never "strategically boosted value of assets by going into playoffs to sell high". That thing never happend. They kept Vogel for another year, fired him, hired Clifford because it's was their decision. To chase playoffs .
Their also was their decision to resign Hennigans players on new contracts. Terrence Ross, Gordon and Vuc all got new contracts under them.

They also never planned rebuild. I don't know how many times you will try to spin narrative on that but that's not what happened. You know it, i know it ,anybody who was active Magic fan in 2021 knows it.

What happened was Aaron Gordon walking into post game interview demanding trade in public. He also said he asked to be traded out in private. So we can assume he asked for trade and they simply either ignored it or didn't took him serious so it was him going out of limb to finally get a f*** out.

We also know for fact that Evan Fournier told everybody in public that he won't resign with Orlando Magic in next season.

Orlando Magic guard Evan Fournier has reportedly told the team he has "no intention" of re-signing as a free agent this offseason, making it likelier he is traded ahead of the March 25 deadline.

ESPN's Tim MacMahon wrote a Fournier trade could come as part of a "roster reset" in Orlando. Aaron Gordon is also expected to see interest before Thursday after reportedly requesting a trade.

Problem here is that you keep pretending they are hired in 2021 and they are only given rebuild to hanlde , so poor little them, they were delth with s***y cards. That's simply not true.
They menaged every single transaction and draft in summer of 2017, whole 2017-18 season, whole 2018-19 season, whole 2020-21 season and in that season, at half, they were forced by core players to rebulid, beacuse they asked for trade AND told everybody they want out

For first THREE YEARS they were doing basically nothing. You can count on finger of your one hand all meaningful transactions from July 2017- firesale 2021.

I can help you:

2017:
free agency: Jonathan Simmons , Shelvin Mack.
Aquired pick in trade-off of 25#th pick. drafted Isaac and Iwundu.


2018
resigned Gordon
Traded Biyombo for Mozgov and Jarian Grant ( well that's win i guess, one medically retired )
Drafted Bamba and Frazier. Traded for Justin Jackson who never played single second for Orlando's professional team
Free agent singing: nobody

2019
resigned Vuc, Birch, MCW and Ross
free agent: Al Faruq Aminu
trade: Fultz ( didn't play that year)

2020

Pure nothingness . Drafted Okeke ( waste) , resigned Isaac (epic waste) , resigned Fultz (overpayed )


So STOP pretending they are new, upcomming, hot, amazing handling- happened to stumble into rebuild front office. They could have done rebuild in 2017,2018,2019, 2020 BEFORE players FORCED them into rebuild. It's their decision each and every year to do almost no changes until something groundbreaking happends.

So i assume next time Magic big move happends, it will be when somebody else asks to be traded out of all this lazy sleepwalking from year to year.

[RookieStar]

First off... thanks SOUL...


Oh hey... theres that word again " evaluation". Are you sure this is our new GM? The answers sure sounds like our usual GMs. Lol

What are you thanking him for?

Oh DAMN! My bad. lol

I really thought this was in response to that other thread where I asked for a transcript cuz I can't listen to that recording.

Thanks Knightro! I would have said " Yall mods look alike" but that would be raci... modist.

[SOUL]

You ignored my questions I posed...

Also all you did was continue to dunk on them when I explicitly said their hands were tied coming into a situation in a failed rebuild.. front office was not going to let them rebuild right away and also I want to hear what retool option was possible at that point

[eyriq]

They took over after 2016-17 season.
Bottom feeders from that era:
Brooklyn- lost in 7 games on lenght of a foot of Durant's shoe to eventual champion Bucks in second round
Suns- played NBA finals
Lakers- won championship
76ers- pretender, but passed first round of playoffs 5 times out of 6
Knicks- passed first round of playoffs
Magic- won 2 playoff games . Yeey.

Maybe objective criticsm about their job isn't fact that they don't use second round picks that nobody really cares about but fact they aren't good at their jobs?

6 years later, 7 lottery picks later, your team PROBABLY shouldn't be still projected to miss playoffs after you have won 0 playoff series in past 6 years and menaged to miss playoffs 4/6 times?

And your peak in all this was 42-40 season?

WeHam spent the first season evaluating and then made retooling moves to see what we had, and had major success in their second season. Nobody expected a 17 game improvement. They ran with it one more season before blowing it up midway through the 3rd season of the retool. The rebuild began and they started rebuilding the core through the draft. Suggs, Franz, and Paolo acquired during the rebuild. All very sensible decisions IMO.

Evaluate 2018 : fire Vogel, trade Elfrid
Retool 2019-20 : hire Clifford, trade Biyombo, acquire Fultz
Blowup 2021: trade Vooch, Gordan, & Fournier
Rebuild 2022 - present : draft Suggs, Franz, Paolo, Black, and Jett

Edited to include Black and Jett

[basketballRob]

Look at the players they had when they got here. AG was the only good team player. The only way Vuc or Fournier could ever win is if they are the 15th man on a good team.

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[pepe1991]

Look at the players they had when they got here. AG was the only good team player. The only way Vuc or Fournier could ever win is if they are the 15th man on a good team.

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Good thing that we got such houl in Gordon trade such is
- not nba player
- not nba starter
- bottom first round pick for next year

#winning

Gordon trade was apsolute dumpsterfire.