2023-2024 Regular Season Game 44: Cleveland Cavaliers (25-15) at Orlando Magic (23-20) - 7pm

[eyriq]

Last word

[Bensational]

I blamed Mosley for generating a gameplan that resulted in Wendell as the 2nd leading shot taker at half time. I stand by that. If it comes from Wendell shooting off broken plays, then it’s a bad gameplan. If it comes from intentional plays for Wendell against one of the best interior defenders, then it’s also a bad gameplan.

I mean listen to yourself

You're suggesting with a straight face that if Wendell has the second most shot attempts in a half that it's a bad gameplan by Mosley regardless of the context behind how Wendell actually got those shots.

Get out of here with that nonsense man. That is trash analysis and you know it.

It was a passing in-game comment, it wasn’t meant to be unpacked into an editorial but you went there and now you’re defending whatever strategy had us down 30 at half time. I don’t even know what your point is. Are you saying it was good basketball that lead to Wendell being a top 2 shot taker for the team? Does the context make it good basketball to you? Does Mosley being a coach who gives his players direction not fit anywhere within the “context”?

In the course of this discussion you’ve claimed that there’s no such thing as plays, and Wendell never gets plays called for him, which is either a grasp at straws or a flawed understanding of what a play is. It’s not uncommon for you to rewrite basketball definitions when you’re wrong though.

[Knightro]

It was a passing in-game comment, it wasn’t meant to be unpacked into an editorial but you went there and now you’re defending whatever strategy had us down 30 at half time. I don’t even know what your point is. Are you saying it was good basketball that lead to Wendell being a top 2 shot taker for the team? Does the context make it good basketball to you? Does Mosley being a coach who gives his players direction not fit anywhere within the “context”?

In the course of this discussion you’ve claimed that there’s no such thing as plays, and Wendell never gets plays called for him, which is either a grasp at straws or a flawed understanding of what a play is. It’s not uncommon for you to rewrite basketball definitions when you’re wrong though.

The only point that I am making - and to be clear, I'm not the only person who called you out for this - is that this suggestion you made that it was somehow an INTENTIONAL PART OF MOSLEY'S GAME PLAN TONIGHT for Carter to be 2nd on the team in shots at halftime was completely ridiculous and false.

Two of Carter's six first half shot attempts came off offensive rebounds right under the basket that he attempted to put back in. Is it Mosley's fault that Carter tried to put those OREBs back in? He's only shooting .826 for the season from 0-3 feet.

Is it Mosley's fault that Carter ended up getting two extra shots that he otherwise wouldn't have gotten because Cole and Black each dumped the ball to him with less than 5 left on the shot clock, forcing him to put up two shots in desperation?

And when I laid out exactly why it it was such a ridiculous comment from you by literally giving you the play-by-play of all six shots Carter took in the first half, you conveniently ignored that evidence right in your face and opted to criticize me over my belief that NBA offense is mostly free flowing and most plays are nothing more than read and react stuff that is almost entirely predicated on how it is defended and not part of some locked in game plan that the coach decides before the game.

Things are more often than not just not the coaching or game plan failure like you and a bunch of other people desperately want it to be at all times.

[ORLMagicGirl15]

Listening to Paolo’s post game interview, I realize that he is way to nice to the players. Call them out P for not watching film. Also let the coaches know that there is no plan when the offense is stagnet.

[DiplomaticMagic]

I turned it off in 2nd qtr. I really needed this game to know yesterday wasnt a fluke. Was so disappointed there was no Isaac or Fultz. Cavs have no Mobley or Garland. This loss is inexcusable.

[Knightro]

I turned it off in 2nd qtr. I really needed this game to know yesterday wasnt a fluke. Was so disappointed there was no Isaac or Fultz. Cavs have no Mobley or Garland. This loss is inexcusable.

Cavs are the hottest team in the league right now, had the rest advantage, and have by literally every measure played much better WITHOUT Garland and Mobley than with them.

It was crappy to get drilled at home, but hardly an inexcusable loss. The Cavs are clearly the better basketball team.

[basketballRob]

We're 3-19 on the second night of b2bs the last 2 seasons.

Sent from my SM-G781U using RealGM mobile app

[Bensational]

It was a passing in-game comment, it wasn’t meant to be unpacked into an editorial but you went there and now you’re defending whatever strategy had us down 30 at half time. I don’t even know what your point is. Are you saying it was good basketball that lead to Wendell being a top 2 shot taker for the team? Does the context make it good basketball to you? Does Mosley being a coach who gives his players direction not fit anywhere within the “context”?

In the course of this discussion you’ve claimed that there’s no such thing as plays, and Wendell never gets plays called for him, which is either a grasp at straws or a flawed understanding of what a play is. It’s not uncommon for you to rewrite basketball definitions when you’re wrong though.

The only point that I am making - and to be clear, I'm not the only person who called you out for this - is that this suggestion you made that it was somehow an INTENTIONAL PART OF MOSLEY'S GAME PLAN TONIGHT for Carter to be 2nd on the team in shots at halftime was completely ridiculous and false.

Posting this again, maybe you’ll actually understand it on the 3rd read…

I blame Mosley for setting a game plan tonight that has Wendell as the 2nd highest shot taker when he’s playing against one of the league’s best defenders.

I’ll explain it for you since you can’t be relied on to correctly interpret this. There are 3 parts to it:

1. I blame Mosley for setting the gameplan
2. It was a gameplan that RESULTED in Wendell as the 2nd highest shot taker at half time on a team with Paolo, Franz, Suggs and Cole on it.
3. Wendell was going against an elite defender and primarily trying to score inside.

Now to further clarify point 2: I’m not saying the gameplan was for Wendell to be a top 2 scorer. I’m saying the gameplan failed and that’s what occurred as a result.

You (and SOUL) got hung up on the attempts instead of simply saying “yeah, we have better options to be taking those shots”. It’s a really simple concession to make. Instead you tried to claim that Wendell outright doesn’t get plays called for him which is an insane leap of association and absolutely incorrect.

Two of Carter's six first half shot attempts came off offensive rebounds right under the basket that he attempted to put back in. Is it Mosley's fault that Carter tried to put those OREBs back in? He's only shooting .826 for the season from 0-3 feet.

Is it Mosley's fault that Carter ended up getting two extra shots that he otherwise wouldn't have gotten because Cole and Black each dumped the ball to him with less than 5 left on the shot clock, forcing him to put up two shots in desperation?

If Mosley gave Wendell the direction to try to go up amongst 3 guys after his offensive board instead of kicking it out to one of our wide open shooters then yes, it’s Mosley’s fault for not prepping WCJ to play his role like Goga would. Is it Mosley’s fault that Wendell got those late handoffs? He wasn’t on the court but he decides who to put on the court and how to direct them to play.

And when I laid out exactly why it it was such a ridiculous comment from you by literally giving you the play-by-play of all six shots Carter took in the first half, you conveniently ignored that evidence right in your face and opted to criticize me over my belief that NBA offense is mostly free flowing and most plays are nothing more than read and react stuff that is almost entirely predicated on how it is defended and not part of some locked in game plan that the coach decides before the game.

Things are more often than not just not the coaching or game plan failure like you and a bunch of other people desperately want it to be at all times.

See now you’re just making stuff up again. I don’t blame Mosley very often at all. You’ve been going on about “featured”, “Wendell doesn’t get plays called for him”, “oh what he does but it’s a tiny amount”, “plays don’t exist”, “they only exist for ballhandlers” and stuff that’s completely unrelated to what I originally said. You’ve literally spiralled into nonsense because you’re desperate for some kind of gotcha moment. This ain’t your day mate, sorry.

[JF5]

This was a burn tape after playing game. Nothing good came out of this except good cardio.

[pepe1991]

Oh wow Ben & Knightro really going at it.

From what i saw, you can make argument that both of you are right tho.

Your offense should be some sort of combination of plays called and players being smart enough to react on defensive mistakes, no matter what coach/captain/playmaker called.
Problem in nba, way more than in other sports is schedule and roster changes and lot of injuries. That makes having good, well trained set actions hard and minimalistic. Many teams don't change rosters over years just to have that sort of mechanism installed ( like Spurs with Duncan, Lakers with Shaq & Kobe etc ). Where players know what they should be doing 95% of time.

This is probably why pick&roll turned into bread & butter. It's simplistic, it's something most teams & players are used to doing whole their lifes, so learning curve is minimal.


You see teams change approach when playoffs roll because they have enough time to sit down and actually scout opponents, seek their weaknesses, enter a gym and work on gameplan how to exploit it.
But in regular season you simply don't have time, personell, nor enough practice for any of it.

Yes, in theory, you want Wendell to make 2 threes in first quater so Allen can move his gigantic a** from rim so Paolo can on other side exploit pick&roll with somebody with Wagner cutting from other side, basically having 4 v 4 without big, with our big boys attacking Cavs midgets. Great.

BUT, we played game before within 24 hours, they went to sleep for 8 hours, woke up, had some sort of rehab running, had breakfest, had lunch, went through streaching and got SOME info about next opponent. And it was probably mentioned that it would be good to drag Allen out of paint either through Wendell making shots or through forcing switches & missmatches. But talking about it, and making it work are two different things.
Cavs are also- nba team. They also are doing their scouting, they know what to do if Allen is out on perimeter, it's not like they will just let you roll them over. They will counter with Okoro switching onto anybody making life harder, making plays slower etc.



And some of you simply severely overrate Goga in general.
He is 7 footer who is good when he rolls at rim, as most bigs are, who are 250 pounds, mostly because nowdays other bigs in non playoff games -just move away. ( just ask yourself what happened to in-face-dunks on bigs on other bigs ?) .

He is slowfooted and can't shoot. So by default he is around rim on both ends. In some games it workes fine, in some games it's awful ( Kings & Hawks game)
Kings were way too fast for him, Sabonis did whatever he wanted.
Hawks game, whenever he was dragged out of paint, either Trae or Murray were beating him off a dribble and finishing or throwing lobs at their Cs. Capela 6-6 FG, Okongwgu 7-12 FG. You won't win many games when you allow opposing Cs to make 13 shots on 73% FG.
He can't defend pick&roll at all, but most teams don't exploit it, he also often doesn't even put hands in the air when he defends in drop. He gets blocks because he is lenghty and isn't THAT unathletic as he looks. But in general he is backup/third string C and nothing more.

[KillMonger]

Read on Twitter

[pepe1991]

Read on Twitter

Love how Isaac is so often injuried ,that he didn't make it to be in picture

[pepe1991]

On bright side our next opponents Memphis:
Morant- out for a season
Bane- out for 6 weeks
Adams- out for a season
Smart- out for at least 6 weeks
Clarke- out for at least a month
Rose- questionable
Aldama- probably out

Not sure can they manufacture 8 men rotation

[richi_v25]

I quit watching a few minutes into the 3rd when we got it down to 19 but it quickly went back up to 33, how did Queen do? Should we invest time into him or is he just a scrub? I think he could be a better Cole(bench scoring guard) since he's taller and plays better defense.

[richi_v25]

On bright side our next opponents Memphis:
Morant- out for a season
Bane- out for 6 weeks
Adams- out for a season
Smart- out for at least 6 weeks
Clarke- out for at least a month
Rose- questionable
Aldama- probably out

Not sure can they manufacture 8 men rotation

They'll figure it out, we always did when we were super injured.

[SOUL]

It's also a bit of a moot point since WCJ's last 4 games he's one of the most efficient players in the NBA. Paolo... hasn't been. Not the worst thing to try to get WCJ going early whether it's by design or not.

[drsd]

Last word

Well this game was a boxscore mess, but here it goes:

Orlando lost the FG% battle (badly, and worse by eFG%), and lost the game.

Another sub 70% FT night.
Magic got trolled on TO differential.
Orlando lost the rebounding differential.

This summed up to the team making its shots actually taking more. This was a horrific game for Orlando statistically.

[zaymon]

Only question i ask myself after this game is can we get Garland (or Mitchell).
Long term i wonder if Howard can replace Suggs as a starter. I love Suggs, but we would need a bucket like Donovan next to him and even Donovan looks better with shooter.... tough choices before FO.

[Skybox]

Oh wow Ben & Knightro really going at it.

From what i saw, you can make argument that both of you are right tho.

Your offense should be some sort of combination of plays called and players being smart enough to react on defensive mistakes, no matter what coach/captain/playmaker called.
Problem in nba, way more than in other sports is schedule and roster changes and lot of injuries. That makes having good, well trained set actions hard and minimalistic. Many teams don't change rosters over years just to have that sort of mechanism installed ( like Spurs with Duncan, Lakers with Shaq & Kobe etc ). Where players know what they should be doing 95% of time.

This is probably why pick&roll turned into bread & butter. It's simplistic, it's something most teams & players are used to doing whole their lifes, so learning curve is minimal.


You see teams change approach when playoffs roll because they have enough time to sit down and actually scout opponents, seek their weaknesses, enter a gym and work on gameplan how to exploit it.
But in regular season you simply don't have time, personell, nor enough practice for any of it.

Yes, in theory, you want Wendell to make 2 threes in first quater so Allen can move his gigantic a** from rim so Paolo can on other side exploit pick&roll with somebody with Wagner cutting from other side, basically having 4 v 4 without big, with our big boys attacking Cavs midgets. Great.

BUT, we played game before within 24 hours, they went to sleep for 8 hours, woke up, had some sort of rehab running, had breakfest, had lunch, went through streaching and got SOME info about next opponent. And it was probably mentioned that it would be good to drag Allen out of paint either through Wendell making shots or through forcing switches & missmatches. But talking about it, and making it work are two different things.
Cavs are also- nba team. They also are doing their scouting, they know what to do if Allen is out on perimeter, it's not like they will just let you roll them over. They will counter with Okoro switching onto anybody making life harder, making plays slower etc.



And some of you simply severely overrate Goga in general.
He is 7 footer who is good when he rolls at rim, as most bigs are, who are 250 pounds, mostly because nowdays other bigs in non playoff games -just move away. ( just ask yourself what happened to in-face-dunks on bigs on other bigs ?) .

He is slowfooted and can't shoot. So by default he is around rim on both ends. In some games it workes fine, in some games it's awful ( Kings & Hawks game)
Kings were way too fast for him, Sabonis did whatever he wanted.
Hawks game, whenever he was dragged out of paint, either Trae or Murray were beating him off a dribble and finishing or throwing lobs at their Cs. Capela 6-6 FG, Okongwgu 7-12 FG. You won't win many games when you allow opposing Cs to make 13 shots on 73% FG.
He can't defend pick&roll at all, but most teams don't exploit it, he also often doesn't even put hands in the air when he defends in drop. He gets blocks because he is lenghty and isn't THAT unathletic as he looks. But in general he is backup/third string C and nothing more.

We’ve been content with our center(s) but furiously debate how critical it is for our missing PG target to be defensive-minded. Given our forward tandem, I’d say it’s a more sensible priority to chase an excellent defensive big man like Claxton than to worry too much about having two elite defending guards at the expense of scoring & floor spreading. Obviously, having guards that score AND defend at a high level is optimal…but tell me who they are. Quickley would have been one. Murray is- but not an elite shooter. Brogdon is solid on both ends, but older.

My point is…Wendell’s good. Goga’s good. But neither is very good- particularly with Mosley’s dream vision in mind. If we got a REAL fearsome defensive Center, a score first Lead Guard would be sufficient. Gafford’s not elite, but he fits the profile and could likely be obtained. Claxton is the best available and we should be fishing for info about his FA plans already (and consider trading for him if we should- like Siakim to IND-he’s staying). “We can just sign him as a UFA” is not realistically how the NBA works anymore.

[djguevara114]

Listening to Paolo’s post game interview, I realize that he is way to nice to the players. Call them out P for not watching film. Also let the coaches no that there is no plan when the offense is stagnet.

As you all know, I finally came around to being a Paolo fan… I will still say he needs to learn how to attack the rim and not shy away from contact and his FT shooting is a real problem, but am bought in now on potential…

And of course, now that I’m bought in, can start to see the momentum for him asking out of Orlando… This FO has built this roster with rose colored glasses… If all of our players consistently played to to their capability, we could complete, the problem is they are either hurt and/or only play to their capability 20% of the time… And if they don’t get Coach Mo someone that can guide him on schemes/preparation/personnel rotations then we will hover at .500 for the foreseeable future… You can see the frustration starting…

Go out and pay what you need to get a Van type to be an assistant?

Go out and get a Draymond, Pat Beverly type who will light a fire under these players?