pepe1991 wrote:SOUL wrote:
Which is still more than what the rest of our team shows on a daily basis. EP is getting to the point where he's becoming dependable most games and aggressive for the majority of it. Vucevic has been stepping it up on defense and doing things that affect the game when his shot isn't on. Most people are not declaring these guys as stars or superstars, but at the very least it's nice to have a few players that are impacting the game more often than not even if it is in losses.
I know you have some weird thing against them because they hang their head every 20 games or get frustrated, but that's something that you have to deal with since they're actually the ones playing the game and going through the battles with their team. I think if it was a huge issue you'd see more people complaining about that instead of a 2 second shot of them on the bench with their head in the towels.
Anyway, accumulating good players isn't the problem. We need to keep good/solid players here, but we also need a star. We have very few "solid" and no star as of yet. AG is probably the closest thing talent wise but he's still a bit away on the offensive end if he's to ever get there.
Instead of putting our players in a position to succeed, we've been a franchise of putting players in abnormal/off roles in hopes that they will improve in that area at the expense of team cohesion and wins. But then we do nothing with that in the future and abandon the experiment, which probably means we just should have played them in their preferred/best position/role in the first place and just increase their usage.
What we need to do after this season is (besides hopefully drafting a star) is really decide where the team intends to go as a franchise and have complete faith in the process with those players. No more short leashes on the higher talent but younger players, no more veteran player monopoly on minutes with complete disregard to how they're playing, no more selling us an entirely different product before the season and then doing something else during the season. At the very least we need some clarity on what the hell we're doing.
Last couple of years Magic are heaven for "proven vets" where they get lot of money, or they simply go here to get healthy, pump some stats and get better deal here, or somwhere else ,because Magic are one few teams where they will actually get any playing time ( in expense of young player
)
So Afflalo, Nelson ,Big Baby where here 3 years ago. Afflalo had his career highs in FGA here,at least team got something for him in return.
Nelson also had his FGA career high in that few years of overplaying him on tanking team.
Davis , naturally, also had career high in FGA here. And it was crazy, dude was shooting 14 FGA per game
.
Let's move on.
Jason Smith, in PER 36, had career high in FGA last year. Naturally when you have Harris, NIcholson and Gordon at PF you give 30 years old one year deal player most shots per possesion in his career.
Jennings didn't shoot that much, but even when he did, he couldn't make them. Still got around 18 mpg based on name alue alone ( 36% FG ).
Frye was awful here, great with Cavs, team got nothing for him.
Ilyasova is averaging Ibakas numbers with 76ers, team got rid of him.
This year: Jeff Green, $15M for this year, 9 ppg, 23 mpg, over 8 FGA, 39% FG, 29% for 3. Nobody had more opportunities to prove that he has some value than him. And he failed. However, Vogel still gives mu 25-30 min every night to the point where he was STARTING SHOOTING GUARD last week.
CJ Watson ( not just this year ) ,i having worst year(s) of his career with Magic. Career lows in TS% , FG% effective FG%, 3 point percentage. He is probably done with NBA after his deal is up. Yet, it won't stop Vogel from playing him.
Meeks would be good trade, if team was good, but because team is not good he was just another 30 years old shooter that didn't have healthy season in over 2 years.
So it's not hard to figure out, Magic every year sign vets because they want to compete ,vets take lot of playing time from young players, and because team does such a poor job at menaging vets they tend to run wild and overshadow young players to the point where they push young players into role players- type role. And if vets show some value, they are traded ( for nothing ) or leave for better deals. And if they suck, they still leave .
You need to have vets but Magic don't have vets, they have mercenaries that use them to get themselfs better contracts. Good vets help young players become better, mercenaries , powered with awful coaches ( both, Vogel and Skiles ) take control over a team and lead them into- Orlando Kings directionless- direction. 4 years of tanking and Magic have 0 players younger than 21, 2 players younger than 22 and bunch of vets that talk how " team needs to play hard" and in same time guys like Augustin and Green play with below zero effort defense and just kill ball movment ,call isolation for themselfs and jack shots.
