pepe1991 wrote:Imo people got caught up in "it's about journey not destination" mantra.
In life, sure, travel toward goal is basically beauty of life, but that simply isn't case in sport.
Teams don't get extra cookie because they built team via draft (or via trade, or via undrafted pool of FAs or how you handle G league team). It's not game, you don't get extra points for doing anything.
Only objective team in sport is to win. How you get there, as long as it's legal is irrelevant. Vast majority of established teams in all the sports stay on top by skipping steps and taking finished products that they lure with money and fame that come along.
Magic boxed themself in corner that they had no reasons to be because of doing knee jerk, retroactive roster decisions all the time.
Half of the forum knew Magic don't have staring level PG in 2017, 2018,2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. We didn't just wake up in summer of 2025 and realized our version of Haliburton died. That player never existed nor there was any intention nor desire to actually find starting level PG, despite fact PG has been most important position in basketball since basketball itself exists.
Aside from that trade for Fultz, who had like 24 games sample size over 3 years that he can't even play in NBA, there was never any active solution seeking for PG spot. There was more than enough evidence that neither Suggs nor Black are PGs by just looking college basketball. Both sky high TOs, low APG numbers with virtually non existing Pick&roll capability nor ability to run offense.
Pacers trade for Haliburton is perfect example of team that is self aware and smart enough to not overvalue own players.
Pacers had 34-38 record with Brogdon; Sabonis and just bag of injury prone players ( Warren, Oladipo; Turner, Levert etc).
Midway through another what looked to be injury riddled road to nowhere, they targeted Haliburton .
Price they payed for him also wasn't that low.
25 years old Sabonis, back to back all star, guy was coming off 20-13-7 season.
For a guy who at that point is "just" 14-7 -3 guy.
That type of trade is type of trade most people here would not agree upon. It would be equivalent of sending PB/Franz for Stephon Castle.
Bottom line, you can't just mimic all the moves from other teams, but you also have to explore all the options. Not just stick with "draft and internal development" like it's some Holy Cow of basketball. It's not. It is probably impossible to just win championship via draft because talents overlap, skills don't match and elite players leave as team runs out of money for everybody. Especially with new CBA.
Well said, Pepe. We definitely need a "Point Guard" but nowadays positionless basketball has really changed the game.
How you define "Point Guard" even changes just from team to team, system to system.
In Rick Adleman's Sacramento days, Chris Webber was the Point Center. Steve Nash's Phoenix Suns days, he was the point running 7 secs offense. In Jerry Sloan's Utah Jazz, he basically revolutionize the game by enforcing "Pick and Roll offense" from Stockton and Karl Malone. Jeff Van Gundy's Houston Rockets with TMac and Yao Ming, TMac was pretty much the Point Shooting Guard. Because he has so much usage rate with the ball. The list goes on and on
Was LeBron a Point in Miami days? But he wasn't a Point Guard. He has the ball in his hands a lot so playmaking responsibility naturally came to him. That is just the revolution of the game.
Do we need to take possessions off of Franz and Paolo and implement another with ball offensive playmaker? Yes, sure. If that complements the duo.
My whole point is we will see what we are going to do. I hope Jeff and Parker gets aggressive. Magic needs some help!
