2023-2024 Regular Season Game 25: Orlando Magic (16-8) at Boston Celtics (19-5) - 3pm

[VFX]

I think I may be getting baited into the Celtics forum. Lol.. They might be taking my post about how Jaylen Brown is a fraud and they won't win a chip this year which they won't and posting it on their forum. THE CELTICS AREN'T WINNING A CHAMPIONSHIP with the corpse of Tito Horford's son and KrisGLASS Pordingus. Maybe they'll make a run so Jayson tatum can turn the ball over 3 million more times in the playoffs.

Yeah hello to Boston fans scouring the forum after a win lol. I’ve been quoted twice here after their parade tonight.

You have a good squad. Especially at home!

I’ll make sure to revisit you guys on your forum when you don’t win **** as usual with your expensive af roster. Lol

I guess paying Brown 300million is good for beating Orlando in December at home but not when it actually matters

[MasterGMer]

Paolo was the only guy that impressed me with his aggressive play!

Jonathan Isaac is trying to maintain a healthy season by chucking up threes and playing timid.

Franz and Moe Wagner are grade A floppers who rely heavily on that soft Euro step but Boston played aggressive defensive, they both were non existent!

If Franz is going to be a star he has to find other ways to be aggressive and help his team, this was his worst game of his career IMO!

We need a better offensive game plan except playing iso ball.

This was literally a playoff like two game series against Boston. Boston has two superstars that went hot in the 4th Q.

Plus Boston has a darn good defense. Give it to our guys some time. I am not worried about Franz. He will be fine. But today's game from him is just uncharacteristic also. Cole couldn't make plays with his offense either

Lots of lessons to learn. But we should be more motivated during this stretch of tough games and pull some Ws.

See you Wednesday!

[ibraheim718]

I think I may be getting baited into the Celtics forum. Lol.. They might be taking my post about how Jaylen Brown is a fraud and they won't win a chip this year which they won't and posting it on their forum. THE CELTICS AREN'T WINNING A CHAMPIONSHIP with the corpse of Tito Horford's son and KrisGLASS Pordingus. Maybe they'll make a run so Jayson tatum can turn the ball over 3 million more times in the playoffs.

Yeah hello to Boston fans scouring the forum lol.

You have a good squad. Especially at home!

I’ll make sure to revisit you guys on your forum when you don’t win **** as usual with your expensive af roster. Lol

Well they're probably wondering why a dirty Knicks fan is on here.

In case it isn't known I've been a Knicks fan for 38 years.. 38 long years and I took an oath to not root for the Knicks until Julius Randle is gone. The magic remind me of the old 90's Knicks team and I love watching Jalen Suggs play basketball that's why I'm here. The whole Knicks forum knows it and they pretty much leave me alone because they know the plight of rooting for the franchise.

[basketballRob]

Lol. We've beaten Boston the last 4-6.

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[yoyojw17]

Franz had a game he would like to forget

OUR BENCH IS NOT THE SAME WITHOUT JINGLES

When healthy... they are a freaking handful of a team.

[Max Power]

It was a bad night, and two games with Boston. This is the hardest part of the season. The teams going to take some hits, especially if they aren’t healthy. I do believe they’ll bounce back and grab a couple wins during this stretch, whether it’s the Bucks or Heat. This team is in its Brian Hill year of its development, like its 2006 predecessor team that Hill coached that improved by leaps and bounds. That doesn’t mean the Magic are contenders yet. The biggest thing the team needs to do is get healthy and assess our guard situation. We still need a scorer for the perimeter badly, and obviously our 3 point prowess, or lack there of is well documented.

[basketballRob]

Cole has been bad on defense, but I do feel like his ankle is still sprained.

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[T-Cat]

Lol. We've beaten Boston the last 4-6.

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I feel like if we had more sizeable defenders off the bench besides JI, we could have at least made the more enjoyable to watch.

[fendilim]

Cole has been bad on defense, but I do feel like his ankle is still sprained.

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There’s a reason why cole extended for cheap. Small guards dont last in the league anymore.

[Bensational]

My guy, you know I respect you but these posts about AB and Jett earlier in the season are actual madness.

Jett wasn't going to fix shooting and Black isn't magically going to fix everything wrong when Franz is struggling and we need a consistent offensive threat.

I love how he's played lately, I traded a lot for AB in Knicks BAF and have huge hopes for him, but I know that next year is when he'll be used way more.

Cole has his warts, mostly his size, but people acting like we can survive off of Fultz/AB right now only are totally punting any sort of consistent three point production from the PG spot.

See this is where I think people are defending an ideal of Cole and not the reality of him, and similarly attacking a stereotype of Black and not the reality of him. You say playing Black is punting on 3’s? He shot and made more 3’s tonight than Cole. You paint a picture of AB being some kind of complete zero when he’s not - and he’s becoming more involved each game.

Most of all I think you’re forgetting the defense has been probably the biggest reason we’ve won this season and Cole is the antithesis of that. He’s probably the worst fitting player on the team in terms of matching team identity and his microwave scoring ability isn’t impactful when he’s allowing opposing players to microwave score all over him too. You point to Cole’s shooting splits, I point to the amount of points the opposing team scores when he’s on the court. Why are you ignoring that?

I don't necessarily disagree with your Cole takes, but most of the posts I see from you lately are about criticizing Cole and nobody else cops the blame. Maybe I missed it but it's hard for me to take anyone's criticism seriously when they attribute a loss on one player alone - not Gary shooting like ****, not Franz being a no show for the 2nd Boston game in a row, not Moe giving up rebounds and bad paint defense.

AB deserves more minutes, yes, but Cole has helped us more than hurt us this year too, even though there are games where he can get exploited quite easily.

I largely take overly biased rookie takes with a grain of salt, whether positive or negative - eyriq with AB, Skin with his anti-Suggs stuff, people championing Jett as some 40% shooter who will solve our issues his rookie year.. it's mostly BS. AB will come along nicely, and some games he's a very positive player who is a driving force in terms of being helpful in terms of winning.. other games he is simply a player people can help off of and ignore on offense and considering they do that to Goga as well, I'd argue it's just as much of an issue as Cole being hunted on defense, seeing as our defense has been a strength this year, unlike our offense.

I zero in on Cole because he’s the most critical option that can be addressed, and because he faces no serious criticism ever. You’re not even prepared to critique his play the way you are AB or Goga or Paolo and Franz or even Fultz.

I’ve said it before: Cole has to play nearly perfectly to offset what he’s likely giving up defensively. Sure we can blame Moe Wagner for his ineffective play recently but he’s a strictly off-ball guy who relies on others to set him up and who’s responsible for that? Cole. When Moe was on his hot streak who was mostly setting him up? Ingles.

This isn’t a case of give AB the keys, but on nights when he’s not only outplaying his rookie mistakes but also outplaying the backup, then he should get more minutes. His defense creates offense.

You sum it up as we’re having trouble on offense. I say we’re getting outscored by our opponents, and one way to address that is to try and out gun them, the other is to stop them scoring without being completely inept offensively. The latter approach will win you playoff games and the former will get you blown out on a cold night.

[Skybox]

Jett 3 from an AB ast

I'd like to see a little more of that before we're down 25. It's no longer relevant by the time Admiral Schofield directs the offense.

[SOUL]

Jett 3 from an AB ast

I'd like to see a little more of that before we're down 25. It's no longer relevant by the time Admiral Schofield directs the offense.

Playing two rookies creates scenarios down 25 more than not lol.

[fendilim]

Would have preferred to see Jett off the bench earlier with Uncle Joe out.

We lose a lot of playmaking with Joe out, and playing Caleb doesnt help.

[SOUL]

I zero in on Cole because he’s the most critical option that can be addressed, and because he faces no serious criticism ever. You’re not even prepared to critique his play the way you are AB or Goga or Paolo and Franz or even Fultz.

This is absolutely nonsense, seriously. You're not about to "fake news" that nobody is zeroing in on Cole because literally 75% of the forum does it when the team is playing bad. There are whipping boys in every iteration of Magic teams - first was Elfrid, then Bamba, Fultz, now it's Cole too. Please do not insult my intelligence with takes like that because you are a smart and good poster who I mostly agree with, but it's extremely clear when you have biases. I was not the person arguing we should move on from Cole before this season, you were. I was mostly fine with our guard situation because I realized we had injuries, that Fultz is a great short-term option, Cole is good off the bench, Suggs would improve, and AB would come along slowly and get the keys next year.

My prior position, unsurprisingly, is mostly unchanged seeing as how we started the season.

Hell, Cole isn't even my favorite guard on the team - Suggs is, and I'm critical of him too, but I would be defending the hell out of him if he got the lion's share of the blame when there are clear problems all over the roster when we lose like this. I defend Fultz more than I want to as well even though I don't think he should be on the team next year.

[SOUL]

I want to see our team "full strength" though. Would be nice to gauge hypotheticals with our roster right now.

[Skybox]

We didn't have a "bad night"...they shut down our system, took everyone out of the game except Paolo (who had 1 assist). Paolo was 4-10 from 3 but the rest of the team was 7-26. I've got to think there was an understanding that Paolo will get his but let's see if anyone else can beat us. Their two stars both shot over 60% from 3 on high volume - in addition to absolutely bullying our guys all over the court. Franz looked like a little kid, particularly vs Brown, in these last two games. Ingles' poise and ball movement for the second unit was glaringly missed. Jett Howard's beautiful release warrants more than 2:27 of junk time next to Admiral and Chuma...particularly when BOS is casually shooting us out of the building and blowing open the game. If you're going to have an Anthony Black or a Jalen Suggs, you need some legit scoring threat next to them. Our offensive scheme has shut down.

We didn't move the ball the way we did during the win streak. Paolo stood alone this afternoon. Defensive play is great but you just can't get anywhere without guards that can shoot. Black hustled his butt off for a team high (by a mile) +17 while only scoring 5 pts, 3 assists and 2 rebs as the starting PG...this is how our team will look against the true contenders...what are we going to do about it? The answer is not more defensive specialists.

We've got some good players and a good coach but still miles away, even if we steal a few here and there.

[IllMagic04]

So Cole has been getting 6th man minutes all year. Our defense has been incredible with him on the floor. So that means either

A. Hes been a very much improved defender who had a rough night vs elite offensive players
B. He's always been awful defensivly and the help defense has his hide him well.

Which one is it?


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[ChosenSavior]

With two days rest before the next game, gotta imagine that Carter and/or Fultz will be back in the fold.

[Residual-Heat]

Lets not forget that we just played the best team in the league. Their starting 5 have a combined salary of 154 mill this year while the Magic's players combine for like 32 mill. Lets remember how young this team is and how far we've come and not put unrealistic expectations on them.

[fendilim]

It expected..

Especially when i saw earlier franz was 1/10 fg. He needs to get his head on right.

Moe, if hes not scoring, is a negative.

Cole is being hunted... i expected that.

We’re getting a taste of the playoffs. Especially Cole being attacked on defense.

Joe is a stabilizing part of our bench. He plays a huge role off the bench. We run a huge chunk of our offense
Off the bench through Joe Ingles’ playmaking, he just isn’t flashy that’s why people Moe gets more of the appreciation.

No Joe = No Moe.