Anatomy of a Disaster

[Bensational]

Not arguing the trade or direction or results…plainly stating how it went with Biz over Vuc. If Ibaka actually showed up for work and Frank Vogel didn’t have the worst stretch of his career in ORL (a la Jeff Green), it might have been a complementary pairing with Vuc (who, at the time, was a low-post bucket).

Oh yeah, fair. Biyombo and Ibaka were such a disappointment.

If Henny had kept Oladipo and Sabonis (and Harris) the team probably would’ve been playoff bound much sooner. I’d still prefer to be where we are now than have-

Sabonis/Vuc
Gordon
Harris/Hezonja
Oladipo/Fournier
whoever/Payton

[Skybox]

Not arguing the trade or direction or results…plainly stating how it went with Biz over Vuc. If Ibaka actually showed up for work and Frank Vogel didn’t have the worst stretch of his career in ORL (a la Jeff Green), it might have been a complementary pairing with Vuc (who, at the time, was a low-post bucket).

Oh yeah, fair. Biyombo and Ibaka were such a disappointment.

If Henny had kept Oladipo and Sabonis (and Harris) the team probably would’ve been playoff bound much sooner. I’d still prefer to be where we are now than have-

Sabonis/Vuc
Gordon
Harris/Hezonja
Oladipo/Fournier
whoever/Payton

Agree- 100%. I don’t like that roster at all. Ibaka trade was a big swing and miss for sure, but to be fair…Oladipo is now an Isaac-level shell who DID have one amazing year and I’m not that high on Sabonis as a guy to build around (he gives me “Vuc chills”). As awful as that trade was…I’d say the Vuc to CHI trade was more amazingly good than Ibaka trade was terribly bad.

[VFX]

So in nearly a decade the Magic have had a bottom 5-10 offensive rating and people are still OK with drafting, trading for, and retaining players that need to learn how to shoot a basketball.

I was super high on Jabari Smith Jr. But as soon as Banchero was selected, I realised the above. Orlando needs to score more, more than it needs defense.

Now Orlando has a starting SG that scores 8.3 ppg; and a PG playing backup SG minutes at 9.9 ppg. These stats are not ok for a position that literally has "shooting" in its title.

2021: high scoring SG at 11.1 ppg


Ever since Fournier left, there is simply no consistent guard scoring.

..

Defense is fine.

People discount “fit” when it comes to roster construction, which is wild to me. Just drafting a bunch of guys with BPA and throwing them into a lineup with other mismatched pieces just doesn’t cut it.

The greatest dynasty of the last decade has two of the greatest shooters of all time and a bunch of big role playing forwards.

If Orlando is centered around two big playmaking forwards, then the obvious next step is to have shooters, that play defense, and 1 solid defensive big. That’s kinda how Boston looks now as others have pointed out.

Those two rosters were built the opposite way around. Big paint teams, with defensive forwards, and little outside shooting. I mean, having Vuc and then acquiring Ibaka and Biyombo addressed zero of the issues on that roster.

You almost didn’t even need to watch the games to know it wasn’t going to work.

[p0peye]

When you look at that 2015 roster, you realize Hennigan was really doing fine and then in 3 moves basically lost his mind and blew it up.

2015 roster
G: Payton, Watson
G: Oladipo, Fournier
F: Harris, Hezonja
F: Gordon, Frye
C: Vucevic, Dedmon

Move 1: Tobias Harris for two expiring contracts (Jennings, Ilyasova)

Move 2: Oladipo and 11th pick for Ibaka

Move 3: Using cap space created from the Harris trade and from the 2016 cap explosion to sign Biyombo, Augustin and Green.

So in less then one year the Magic went from a very promising young rotation to this…

2016 roster
G: Payton, Augustin
G: Fournier, Watson
F: Gordon, Hezonja
F: Ibaka, Green
C: Vucevic, Biyombo

Much older and so much worse.

And Skiles, the coach that Hennigan was attempting to appeal to, ended up quitting anyway!

Henny's seat got hot as Martins and ownership wanted to see results, thus he tried to accelerate on the fly. Skiles wanted Payton replaced, but that didn't happen as Payton was Henny's pet player and ultimately he died on that hill.

[basketballRob]

Anathomy of disaster: Trying to build roster where you are so delusional to understand that Payton and Gordon aren't cornerstones.

Gordon existence moved Harris out of existence.
Payton's existence impacted Ibaka trade & picking Evan over Oladipo due "fit".

Biyombo was just nail in a coffin

Harris has been paid over $200m for basically being an average player. He can't guard anyone.

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[fendilim]

I liked Henny and had the chance to hang out with him for a little while at the Staples center during a Magic game back in the day.
He did start out great as our GM and I liked a lot of his ideas.
I was living in LA at the time and he asked my opinion about a young Russian/Armenian (can't remember which) player they had at the time.

On April 30, 2015, the Orlando Magic extended the contract of Hennigan through the 2017–18 season. He was fired on April 13, 2017. In his five years as GM, the Magic posted a 132–278 record, the worst five-year stretch in team history.[6] His interim replacement was assistant general manager Matt Lloyd for nearly a month before it was announced that Milwaukee Bucks general manager John Hammond would be his official replacement.

Looks like he might be in OKC now?
https://basketball.realgm.com/staff/Rob-Hennigan/Summary/1301

He was doing a good job collecting assets, I think he has an eye for talent.

He just loose control of the juggling when Alex Martins put his fingerprint on the Scott Skiles hire. **** things up from there on

[drsd]

Defense is fine.

I did some light statistics on this and concluded that for Orlando in 2022/23, game-to-game defensive-rating accounted for about 30% of the winning outcomes, and offensive-rating accounted for another about 40%. So: yes defence mattered this last season, but a little less than offense mattered. And also, there is another 30% of "something" not in DEFrat or OFFrat that "explains" winning, at least for the Magic in 2022/23. I am too old and tired to try to find "it".

[Skybox]

I liked Henny and had the chance to hang out with him for a little while at the Staples center during a Magic game back in the day.
He did start out great as our GM and I liked a lot of his ideas.
I was living in LA at the time and he asked my opinion about a young Russian/Armenian (can't remember which) player they had at the time.

On April 30, 2015, the Orlando Magic extended the contract of Hennigan through the 2017–18 season. He was fired on April 13, 2017. In his five years as GM, the Magic posted a 132–278 record, the worst five-year stretch in team history.[6] His interim replacement was assistant general manager Matt Lloyd for nearly a month before it was announced that Milwaukee Bucks general manager John Hammond would be his official replacement.

He was doing a good job collecting assets, I think he has an eye for talent.

Weltman has done a great job of "collecting assets"...lets see if he clings to the wrong ones for too long (again)...I'd say it's time to focus more on team construction than more simply BPA assets. You DO need a formidable bench, but I'm hoping we're at the sweet spot to pivot towards team needs over just stupid s**t like wingspan for wingspan's sake.

[pepe1991]

Anathomy of disaster: Trying to build roster where you are so delusional to understand that Payton and Gordon aren't cornerstones.

Gordon existence moved Harris out of existence.
Payton's existence impacted Ibaka trade & picking Evan over Oladipo due "fit".

Biyombo was just nail in a coffin

Harris has been paid over $200m for basically being an average player. He can't guard anyone.

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He is okey, he is ultra overpayed because 76ers can't sign anybody so he leveradged that for crazy contract and they were forced to accept it just to keep him.

It's s***y situation to be once you deal max contracts.

New CBA kind a guarantees that team's peak will be 2,3,4 years at most and you will be forced into selling out due unsustainable contracts.

[eyriq]

I never liked Harris's game.

[BCS]

I never liked Harris's game.

Neither did I and wanted him traded, but that trade was not it, that was horrible, but little did we know it would only get worse, lol.

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[jezzerinho]

Not arguing the trade or direction or results…plainly stating how it went with Biz over Vuc. If Ibaka actually showed up for work and Frank Vogel didn’t have the worst stretch of his career in ORL (a la Jeff Green), it might have been a complementary pairing with Vuc (who, at the time, was a low-post bucket).

Oh yeah, fair. Biyombo and Ibaka were such a disappointment.

If Henny had kept Oladipo and Sabonis (and Harris) the team probably would’ve been playoff bound much sooner. I’d still prefer to be where we are now than have-

Sabonis/Vuc
Gordon
Harris/Hezonja
Oladipo/Fournier
whoever/Payton

Agree- 100%. I don’t like that roster at all. Ibaka trade was a big swing and miss for sure, but to be fair…Oladipo is now an Isaac-level shell who DID have one amazing year and I’m not that high on Sabonis as a guy to build around (he gives me “Vuc chills”). As awful as that trade was…I’d say the Vuc to CHI trade was more amazingly good than Ibaka trade was terribly bad.

It wasn't just that Ibaka was a miss. It was the massive value defecit in terms of what we sacrificed to bring him in. Just eyewatering how Henny got taken to the cleaners.

[pepe1991]

I never liked Harris's game.

There are things in his game that aren't great but he is very solid complimentary scoring option.

Against Nets in first round he just finished series with 20 ppg, 9 rpg, 2 apg, 57% FG and 57% for 3

[MasterGMer]

Anathomy of disaster: Trying to build roster where you are so delusional to understand that Payton and Gordon aren't cornerstones.

Gordon existence moved Harris out of existence.
Payton's existence impacted Ibaka trade & picking Evan over Oladipo due "fit".

Biyombo was just nail in a coffin

Harris has been paid over $200m for basically being an average player. He can't guard anyone.

Sent from my SM-G781U using RealGM mobile app

He is okey, he is ultra overpayed because 76ers can't sign anybody so he leveradged that for crazy contract and they were forced to accept it just to keep him.

It's s***y situation to be once you deal max contracts.

New CBA kind a guarantees that team's peak will be 2,3,4 years at most and you will be forced into selling out due unsustainable contracts.

Can you elaborate on why the peak is only 2,3,4 years? How is unsustainable?

I can definitely see Magic making a move this offseason. It depends on the situation and it depends on the cost.

I just do not think our FO is aggressive enough by any means. They tend to be very conservative and wait for things to happen depending on the timing. I do not like it though

[Optimus_Steel]

I dislike to rehash stuff that's been discussed many times but here is my $.02 because it's the off-season:

-The Harris trade: we had just resigned Harris as he was a FA to retain him as an asset and we had a young Aaron Gordon clashing on the court with Harris, but I get the sense Henny struggled trading what at the time was a large contract and with pressure from Alex Martins (why is he still running this team?) and he panicked into a salary dump deal. I do remember Stan in an interview after the trade, who was running Detroit at the time, saying he was shocked we didn't ask for a first round pick and that he would have easily given it to us as Harris was worth it. Major major fail in asset management. The problem was not making a trade, it's what we got back in return...

-The Oladipo trade: I didn't mind trading Oladipo but another of "it's what we got back in return..." fails. Dipo should have been the main piece in a trade for an established star and that was used for a role player that was declining in prior years, who was not even a top 2 player on the previous team. Then we gave away a draft pick to top it off to "sweeten the deal"....

-The Biyombo signing: we bring in this guy who is strictly an energy defender and rebounder to a team that struggles on offense...invest on bigs when the entire league is transitioning to versatile 3pt shooting forwards and guards and spacing....idiotic to say the least....

-The Vuc situation: we load up on bigs because of Vuc's short comings, creates a log jam that we don't clean up right away and the spacing is atrocious or should I say non existent. Vuc is upset, Ibaka is upset, then we trade Ibaka away for less return than was sent out half a season in to acquire him....

-We draft Isaac and Bamba in back to back years: more bigs taken with lottery picks, Vuc and AG still in the team....utter waste.

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[pepe1991]

Harris has been paid over $200m for basically being an average player. He can't guard anyone.

Sent from my SM-G781U using RealGM mobile app

He is okey, he is ultra overpayed because 76ers can't sign anybody so he leveradged that for crazy contract and they were forced to accept it just to keep him.

It's s***y situation to be once you deal max contracts.

New CBA kind a guarantees that team's peak will be 2,3,4 years at most and you will be forced into selling out due unsustainable contracts.

Can you elaborate on why the peak is only 2,3,4 years? How is unsustainable?

I can definitely see Magic making a move this offseason. It depends on the situation and it depends on the cost.

I just do not think our FO is aggressive enough by any means. They tend to be very conservative and wait for things to happen depending on the timing. I do not like it though

Because it's very expensive to keep core of 3,4 players together for long period of time.

Imo Celtics are best nba team today. Their core are Brown, Tatum, Horford and Smart.

Brown is UFA next year and can walk or ask for supermax to stay. Horford is 37 and could decline or retire every year.

Tatum will opt out of his contract after 2024-25 season.

So in order to keep Tatum and Brown together, Celtics will face some epic + 100M cumulative salary and that will dry up all the money to sign "help" as current supporting cast will either retire or ask for bigger money. Money that Celtics won't be able to pay.o

New CBA will forbid teams in deep luxury to use MLE, to sign vaiwed players etc, retooling around stars will be very difficult.

[VFX]

-We draft Isaac and Bamba in back to back years: more bigs taken with lottery picks, Vuc and AG still in the team....utter waste.

This is the worst part about the whole situation.

Elfrid Payton and Evan Fournier proved nothing at that point. Defensive forwards and bigs contribute very little to a teams success.

In here is a point that never gets addressed.

2016 - back court is Elfrid and Fournier drafted AG 2 years prior - trade draft pick for Ibaka.

2017- literally the next year they draft Jonathan Isaac. Starting back court is as pedestrian as ever while making this selection. Offense is absolutely terrible.

2018 - they draft Mo Bamba. You can’t make this up. They quadruple down on one of the worst guard rotations in the nba and draft another big.

2019 - they draft an injured Forward that won’t play for a year, while they are competing for playoffs with Isaac, Aaaron Gordon, and decide to sign Aminu for ridiculous money nobody else would offer.

This is a blueprint for squandering draft capital by making selections that make absolutely no sense either in roster-construction or minute distribution.

Still today there are people that want to spend lottery picks on players like Jerace Walker and GG Jackson while The Magic have one of the worst back courts in the league with a decade of bottom 5-10 ortg.

Magic have their star forwards that will each play 28-30+ mpg.

[dsg2021]

I’m very glad that with Markelle now the story on the advanced stats paper actually matches with what I see as real improvement on the floor. But at the same time, I hope people can see why my last 5 posts here have been about letting Banchero (and Wagner) point forward much more moving forward. I’m looking for that go-to piece and smooth operator who can make anything anytime. Paolo as the point? What if he dribbles you down to the post with his height? What if he uses his heavy frame and barrels into the paint where no one has the strength to guard him and only foul him? What if he has PnR’s and set plays for days to find anything from dishes to mid range and 3 range jumpers. Playoff defense suffocates ORL in round 2? Doesn’t matter because Paolo with the unguardable middies and drives ALSO runs their plays almost 24/7. Which way is he gonna go with the possession?

You play off your strengths first like having two point forwards (not disimilar to Turk and Lew) and go from there. If we’re not going to do that, then what are we doing?

I don't want to make this the 30th thread on this forum talking about Markelle Fultz...
However, you are correct about playing to your strengths based upon the roster construction.

Franz and Paolo are special players as potential playmakers. The rest of the roster takes that away from them, or doesn't strengthen their current weaknesses, then the FO isn't doing their job.

I'm not entirely sure why people can't grasp looking at these previous decisions as learning lessons when it comes to roster construction.

The 2015 and 2016 rosters were so incredibly flawed from a skill set perspective that it is embarrassing they were even rolled out. I could say the same for the current roster IF changes aren't made this offseason. Gary Harris can't be the only guy in the starting lineup that draws defenses from 3. There is a reason why Orlando always has a bottom 5 offense.

Here are the ratings by season.

2014 - 2015 - #27
2015 - 2016 - #22
2016 - 2017 - #28
2017 - 2018 - #25
2018 - 2019 - #22
2019 - 2020 - #23
2020 - 2021 - #29
2021 - 2022 - #29
2022 - 2023 - #26

So in nearly a decade the Magic have had a bottom 5-10 offensive rating and people are still OK with drafting, trading for, and retaining players that need to learn how to shoot a basketball.

Couldn't agree with you more.

I think people must be taking case studies and saying "oh, this is a cautionary tale or something." Or they are so in their head with the wrong 'title team makeup' that was maybe too long ago by now. Has to be something like this. I can't even think of a specific example, maybe SAC going for SG's and Shooters for multiple drafts with no impact.

Maybe it's concerted tanking, purposeful avoidance of matching the team until they like certain main pieces?

[purpleswordfish]

It's hilarious to see people in here still defending Hennigan's moves. He should've been investigated by the league for making that completely lopsided trade with OKC, getting fired and immediately finding a landing spot in OKC. It reeks of a quid pro quo.

[drsd]

It's hilarious to see people in here still defending Hennigan's moves. He should've been investigated by the league for making that completely lopsided trade with OKC, getting fired and immediately finding a landing spot in OKC. It reeks of a quid pro quo.

For me signing Biyombo was worse than trading for Ibaka. The combination of both was just so painful though.