ESPN Player rankings: Orlando Magic

tooler · Post #81 » by **tooler** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 6:28 pm

Vucevic at 55. 7th best center in the East behind the following:

Horford (PF?)
Brook Lopez (haha)
Al Jefferson (haha)
Noah and/or Gasol
Drummond
Monroe

Regarding young teams in the East, 4 Bucks starters are ranked higher than our entire team, and one of them had an ACL injury.

Wooooooo team!!!

Umm, time to win some games I guess.

silent1900 · Post #82 » by **silent1900** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 8:17 pm

I have seen some ratings that raised my eyebrow as well, but I believe I read that the ratings were the compilation of 100 ESPN NBA reporters/analysts....if that is true, this holds a lot more weight with me than the typical 'Top 10' click bait.

Orlwillbeback · Post #83 » by **Orlwillbeback** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 9:54 pm

I think alot of what goes into these rankings depend on who gets paid. Oquinn was actually worse last year but got paid a little bit by phil jackson and bam he goes up like 200 spots.

Vooch was 81 and these rankings were compiled before we gave him an extension. Harris got paid even his improvement was extremely marginal and he went up like 40 spots. These writers dont follow these teams close enough to make real accurate assessments and the real value of a player should only be assessed by real gms and scouts.

OrlandO · Post #84 » by **OrlandO** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 10:55 pm

tooler wrote:4 Bucks starters are ranked higher than our entire team, and one of them had an ACL injury.

Jabari being ranked in the top 50 is a joke.

tooler · Post #85 » by **tooler** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 11:00 pm

OrlandO wrote:
tooler wrote:4 Bucks starters are ranked higher than our entire team, and one of them had an ACL injury.

Jabari being ranked in the top 50 is a joke.

Especially since it's a measure of impact this season, and I believe it generally takes players time to get back into the swing of things after an ACL injury even if they're actively playing. See Noel last year.

drsd · Post #86 » by **drsd** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 8:52 am

55. Никола Вучевић. This seems about correct to me. This places him at the middle #2 level. Given that he is a stat man that has not played winning ball, he will get ranked below the 5th best Center.

58. Victor Oladipo. Seems a little low to me in that the press usually considers him Orlando's best player. Still there are a lot of excellent SGs in the league and ranking at the low end of #2 seems fairly OK.

drsd · Post #87 » by **drsd** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 9:06 am

So to recap, this is Orlando's depth chart based on players' rankings.

Payton-4/Watson-8/Napier-10
Oladipo-2/Fournier-7
Harris-3/Hezonja-8/Marble-UR
Gordon-5/Frye-6/Nicholson-11
Vučević-2/Smith-10/Dedmon-13

It is hard to argue with this. Most fans think Orlando lacks a #1 guy. But by next year the team might have five #2 guys. PF qualitatively is clearly weak this year. But ESPN also projects a lack of depth overall with the Bigs.

..

fklt · Post #88 » by **fklt** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 11:23 am

Dude this thing you got going on for the last 5 pages about being in the top 60 makes you a number 2 guy, being in the 90 makes you a number 3 guy is pretty flawed, if not plain stupid. Nothing ever does work that way.

If we are to put any kind of meaning to these numbers, other than being a popularity contest,
being lower than 75 means you are a worse than average starter. And that probably means you are starting on a bad team. Which is bad.

If we had a guy ranked 29th, that does not mean that we had found that 1 one guy who is gonna carry us into championship.i

And if we were to take an average of those numbers, i'm pretty sure we would end up a bottom-3 team, which by itself **** on the notion that we have 2 number 2 guys and so on and future is bright and we should be mildly happy.

If we ever to win a championship with this crew you'll probably be seeing almost all of our guys jumping into top 30, which i hope makes you then aware of the point that peoples votes only determine how popular you are and nothing else.

tooler · Post #89 » by **tooler** » Thu Oct 15, 2015 4:45 pm

Middleton went from 310 to 49. An afterthought until Jason Kidd came along.

Gives me hope some of our guys can flourish in a good offensive and defensive system. Winning solves everything!

OrlDave · Post #90 » by **OrlDave** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 6:52 pm

I'm fine with our rankings. They are steady improvements year to year as you'd expect from young players. If we make the playoffs, they'll all go up again next year as well.

tooler · Post #91 » by **tooler** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 5:55 pm

I'm always amused by glitches in systems, so I had to chuckle when I saw Drummond was ranked 30th both this year and last year. He didn't break out last year compared to his second season, so I guess the pundits will try again! Hah.