2024-2025 Regular Season Game 45: Orlando Magic (23-21) vs Toronto Raptors (10-32) 7:30PM

[Bergmaniac]

I can't wait for the All-Star break, we badly need it, the team looks exhausted, and no wonder with all the injuries and our demanding style of play. We made our first 5 threes and then went 2/23 until we made two meaningless ones in garbage time, you just can't win games today when you shoot this badly.

One team had Bruce Brown and Kelly Olynyk, experienced vets who can start on many teams, as their main players off the bench, the other had Caleb Houstan and Trevelin Queen, guys who would never see rotation minutes in normal circumstances. It's just very hard to win games given the disparity in healthy talent, especially when you have had to deal with being massively short-handed for a while, winning mostly by hustle doesn't work for more than 2-3 games. Losing Isaac early also hurt us, as bad as Wendell was, we still lost his minutes by only 1 point, but the minutes we played without a real centre we were obliterated.

Banchero is still clearly not 100% and his defence has been pretty awful since he came back. Still, hard to blame him much given how little help he is getting offensively and how long he was out.

Wendell's inability to hit a 3 no matter how open he is is really hurting the offense, his shooting was never a priority for defences but in previous years they still had to pay some attention ot him when he spotted up, now he is completely ignored and that makes our already bad spacing even worse.

Black did some good things, especially early on, but he shot poorly overall. Also, too many possessions he took way too long to get into the offensive set and we had to force shots with the shot clock going down, others were guilty of this too.

[eyriq]

KCP and Paolo are the only two players with positive BPM for Orlando this game.

Scottie easily gets vested. They had a ton of players step up with him.

[drsd]

Yikes. Only counting players not listed in the injury report we have:

Guards: AB, TQ, CoJo
Forwards: Paolo, TDS, Caleb
Bigs: WCJ

We need eight...

Kcp?

Whoops! You are right, I forgot about him. Sorry, KCP!

In the end, as Isaac only logged 5 minutes, it basically was only these 8 that played.

[eyriq]

It's not "one game", it's a period of many years where most of our decisions have been bad decisions. That has all culminated in what you're watching out there.

If you want to use this game or these last few games to undermine Weltman, have at it. It's the ultimate cherry picking and will 100% result in the wrong conclusion. Easily avoidable error but it sounds like you've already made up your mind and love to swarm to anything that can be construed as making your point.

[drsd]

Offense sucked; no ball movement at all. And the defense was worse.

I can't be bothered with boxscore thoughts. Orlando needs shooting and needs another big. How many different ways can that be said?


Back to the game though, (I lied, here are the boxscore thoughts):
In the end the Magic starters did enough. This game was lost becasue the Raptors bench SMOKED the Magic bench. My 12 yo son would say, "the Magic's bench was COOKED".

So: this game's injury report is the key box-score item. Hard to be surprised by that.

p.s. the 29% threeball line helps the Magic cement their place as the 4th worst three point shooting team every.

[Skybox]

I'm still not that impressed with Barnes...definitely a very good player, but not a max guy to build around, imo. I still contend that Suggs has a good chance of surpassing him, career-wise. Last year's Suggs showed real promise offensively...I hope the shooting wasn't a fluke. I don't think TOR looked good, but ORL looked awful (understandably - but still disappointing).

[three3d]

Gary Harris games played this season 20
Franz games played this season 25
Paolo and Franz will wind up playing more games this season after tearing their obliques than freaking Gary Hamstrings . Also kinda like the nickname Gary Hamstrings

[Skybox]

8-) Gary Harris games played this season 20
Franz games played this season 25
Paolo and Franz will wind up playing more games this season after tearing their obliques than freaking Gary Hamstrings . Also kinda like the nickname Gary Hamstrings

I don't know what to say about that guy...I really don't like to pick at injured guys, especially something like hamstrings or obliques, but he's looked pretty bouncy on the bench for quite a while and also most likely to be caught cracking up and goofing around while his teammates limp around and try to keep it together. I've always been cool with him as a solid bench and locker room guy - but it feels like he's not feeling the pain of sucking like Paolo, for example, would.

[Bergmaniac]

Hamstring injuries are tricky. Yes, it sucks that Harris can't play now when we could really use him, but I doubt it's because he's milking his injury unnecessary.

[JoshuaPotter]

Well Black got minutes and put numbers up, just not enough bodies / chemistry to go around. Somedays you clock into work and realize you are half staffed. This was that day for Orlando. Seemed like we have had quite a few of those.

Also is Gary Harris like "really ok?" lol

[OrlandoDream]

Raptors still suck but so do we in this depleted roster. A 90% healthy roster and we spank them next time. My biggest surprise has been how bad our defense has been without Franz, Suggs and Goga. Guys like KCP and AB that are suppose to be defensive stoppers getting burned by raps rookies and grady dick.

[Last Guardian]

If this was our roster all year we'd unfortunately be worst team in the league. Its just bad luck to even have to see this lineup out there consistently.

[Redwood]

It's not "one game", it's a period of many years where most of our decisions have been bad decisions. That has all culminated in what you're watching out there.

If you want to use this game or these last few games to undermine Weltman, have at it. It's the ultimate cherry picking and will 100% result in the wrong conclusion. Easily avoidable error but it sounds like you've already made up your mind and love to swarm to anything that can be construed as making your point.

I'm not sure how it's cherry picking. We have been better at various aspects of the game in the past, sure, but ultimately the goal is to be a championship contender and that requires depth. We're an extremely top heavy team and unless your better players are HOF quality you won't be threatening for a championship anytime soon if you're a top heavy team. I like PB and Franz but they have a long way to go before anyone puts them at that level.

I've "made up my mind" because I'm watching us play. Your issue is that you made up your mind before the season began. You and Soul are essentially identical, the team is always great, and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong.

That's not reality. The team has MAJOR issues, depth is not a small thing. We have ZERO depth. The injuries have revealed this for all the world to see. Nobody fears our bench, and nobody fears our outside shooting. The ROSTER assembled is of very low quality, hence why we're seeing what we are. I'm kind of convinced you don't know what cherry picking actually means.

[eyriq]

You and Soul are essentially identical....

That's the nicest compliment I've received in quite some time. Thank you.

[Bergmaniac]

I'm not sure how it's cherry picking. We have been better at various aspects of the game in the past, sure, but ultimately the goal is to be a championship contender and that requires depth. We're an extremely top heavy team and unless your better players are HOF quality you won't be threatening for a championship anytime soon if you're a top heavy team. I like PB and Franz but they have a long way to go before anyone puts them at that level.

I've "made up my mind" because I'm watching us play. Your issue is that you made up your mind before the season began. You and Soul are essentially identical, the team is always great, and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong.

That's not reality. The team has MAJOR issues, depth is not a small thing. We have ZERO depth. The injuries have revealed this for all the world to see. Nobody fears our bench, and nobody fears our outside shooting. The ROSTER assembled is of very low quality, hence why we're seeing what we are. I'm kind of convinced you don't know what cherry picking actually means.

I stronlgly disagree with most of this. Zero depth? We are over .500 with Franz missing 20 games, Paolo missing 34 games, Suggs missing 11 games, Mo Wagner missing 15 games and plenty of injuries of other rotation players. That's the opposite of a top heavy "Zero depth" team for me. Sure, the bench has looked horrible lately, but it now consists of mostly third string players who would never see minutes in the playoffs in normal circumstances.

[VFX]

I'm not sure how it's cherry picking. We have been better at various aspects of the game in the past, sure, but ultimately the goal is to be a championship contender and that requires depth. We're an extremely top heavy team and unless your better players are HOF quality you won't be threatening for a championship anytime soon if you're a top heavy team. I like PB and Franz but they have a long way to go before anyone puts them at that level.

I've "made up my mind" because I'm watching us play. Your issue is that you made up your mind before the season began. You and Soul are essentially identical, the team is always great, and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong.

That's not reality. The team has MAJOR issues, depth is not a small thing. We have ZERO depth. The injuries have revealed this for all the world to see. Nobody fears our bench, and nobody fears our outside shooting. The ROSTER assembled is of very low quality, hence why we're seeing what we are. I'm kind of convinced you don't know what cherry picking actually means.

I stronlgly disagree with most of this. Zero depth? We are over .500 with Franz missing 20 games, Paolo missing 34 games, Suggs missing 11 games, Mo Wagner missing 15 games and plenty of injuries of other rotation players. That's the opposite of a top heavy "Zero depth" team for me. Sure, the bench has looked horrible lately, but it now consists of mostly third string players who would never see minutes in the playoffs in normal circumstances.

I was kinda waiting this season for people to come out of the woodwork when Orlando didn’t have a perfectly healthy season talking about how important signing “depth” was for fear of injuries.

Yeah, they re-signed a bunch of guys and they all got injured anyway. Gary Harris, Carter, Moe, JI every other game, etc.

You know what probably would have mitigated random oblique injuries to our two main guys? Probably a point guard getting them better looks at the basket instead of them needing to drive into bodies under the rim every possession.

Seems like at least 75% of Orlando’s offense is Franz and Paolo catching the ball and driving downhill as hard as possible to finish through fouls. What could go wrong? Maybe getting injured because your system on offense sucks?

Probably more important to make a sensical starting lineup than giving Gary Harris $7m to take up a roster spot and do cardio rehab for an entire season. Or to have JI play one game a week at best for 12 minutes. Very high bar here for Orlando.

But no, pay a bunch of dudes to get injured anyway and end up playing Caleb Houstan and Trevelin Queen 25+ mpg because the FO lacks common sense. How much are those other guys playing in the playoffs all things considered? 10 minutes? How long is Franz/Paolo/Suggs going to be off the floor in close games? 0 minutes?

Yeah, depth is good. It’s a long season. But rounding out your roster without basic necessities first is the issue here.