Official Speculation Thread ‘17-18’: XVIII: The Long Wait Continues

[Tayswagzzz]

Hyping up Vuc for trade value

[SOUL]

The way people bring up Payton when the discussion is squarely on Vucevic is like Trump supporters still bringing up Hilary because they can't face the facts.

[SOUL]

And it's just like football. Rosen, Allen, and Mayfield are already starters 4 weeks into their seasons, because the veterans that have been steadily "decent" to "okay" in their careers at some point, but never great enough to fully lead a team anywhere, have crapped the bed early on. This team has a whole lot of people caping for Sam Bradford and Tyrod Taylor sort of players the last few years until they realized oops, we have to do this entire rebuild again because this slow burn approach of watching and waiting with players we already know the ceilings of (and I'm not even referring to Vucevic here, just other veterans that we gave tons of mins to), and finally now admit that they were wrong about letting the young guys build value together instead of trade them all at different times while undervaluing them and not seeing what their potential could be in first or second option roles.

The minute Vucevic starts struggling is when the fans who are on the fence about Bamba getting minutes right out of the gate will be 100% in his corner. That's the reason I see Vuc being moved or pushed to another role, because it's not fun being in that position. Unless Vuc balls out of his mind this year, the whole year, I don't see how that doesn't happen.

Coaches are always going to feel more comfortable with the players that already know the systems, have experienced live NFL ball, know what to do in most situations, it's the same in the NBA.. it's how long each franchise is willing to wait before they pull the trigger. They know what the deal is when they have a top rookie waiting in the wings.

[NickAnderson]

Chill out guys it was a joke

[SOUL]

I'm good

I notice some people like to add their little political jabs in here, so I'm just having fun too.

[NavalAviator94]

Just imagine if we resigned Vuc next offseason lol

Then wed have two good centers. (assuming bamba pans out). Plus the whining and crying would rival Hillary supporters after the election.

Sent from my VS501 using RealGM mobile app

You're right, keeping Vuc as starting center the next 4 years would be almost as bad as Trump as president.

MAGA with Vuc as the eventual backup.


Sent from my iPad using RealGM mobile app

[PrimeThyme]

I'm good

I notice some people like to add their little political jabs in here, so I'm just having fun too.

I only see one poster that consistently does it. I just think its unnecessary in general. But I mean political talk is infesting sports talk these days so I guess its just natural that it would show up here. It would just be nice to be able to come here or at least the basketball specific threads on this board and not see it. This summer more than ever I've noticed it even in these threads tho.

[SOUL]

I'm good

I notice some people like to add their little political jabs in here, so I'm just having fun too.

I only see one poster that consistently does it. I just think its unnecessary in general. But I mean political talk is infesting sports talk these days so I guess its just natural that it would show up here. It would just be nice to be able to come here or at least the basketball specific threads on this board and not see it. This summer more than ever I've noticed it even in these threads tho.

Definitely itching for preseason to start, about to lose my mind with this long wait, but it's so close.

[VFX]

Read on Twitter

This'll go over well on here

Completely validating my criticism of his hiring.

Well if that’s all it takes, it is safe to say that you would not give the guy a chance no matter what.

We literally all have agreed that preseason and media day is all words and it means nothing. Yet you get upset when Clifford says something that is the truth? Vuc is the guy who Orlando has ran the offense through for years. And until he gets traded, that’s probably still going to be the case since we have no real perimeter scoring and very young wing players.

Does it make sense to bench a starter for a new draft pick that barely weighs 225? To me, it seems like an unreasonable thing to expect from an NBA team. Would I like to see Bamba start? Yes, for sure. But why would the Magic bench Vuc, especially when they are possibly trying to trade him?

I don’t really see anything wrong with what Clifford is saying here, and I am not even a huge fan of the hire. An NBA coach is going to play his best guys.

Most people were saying that Clifford would not start Isaac yet that appears to not be the case at all. Besides Bamba not starting yet, I don’t see much wrong with the projected rotation. But I haven’t heard many people who are super critical of Clifford acknowledge that Isaac starting is great thing for us. Instead I see overreaction that Vuc is still here when there has not been one decent trade rumor that he is a part of yet.

All I’m saying is that his reputation is to lean heavily on post play and playing people out of position - per every Hornets fan that lived through his tenure.
Having Clifford say that Vuc is integral to the offense and I see quotes like this -

“Stretching the floor, obviously, that’s the way the NBA is going,” Vucevic said. “That’s something I’ve worked on a lot. But Coach, he also said he wants to use me inside a lot. He saw how effective I was in the past years, especially two or three years ago, when we played a lot inside the way the NBA was going. He wants to go back to that some: have me score some easy ones inside, be inside-out, not only outside. I think that works perfect for me. I don’t want to be just running around the 3.

That’s going to piss off fans that are ****ing tired of watching Orlando struggle offensively using an outdated scheme. Orlando was terrible when Vuc was “effective” inside because it isn’t a dynamic offense and we’ve been using it as a crutch forever... Clifford won’t help that and these quotes solidify why people weren’t and aren’t excited. Add to that the fact that he’s not opposed to playing Bamba with Vuc and it’s exactly what Hornets fans warned us about with the hire. He literally says -

”One of the things that I’m hopeful of – and I don’t know if it will be this way from Day 1 – but that we will have a package of offense set to put in where they can play together some, too. I think so much of that will be dependent on whether they can play together, which I think they can”

How can he not see that won’t be effective and hasn’t worked since Vuc has been in the team next to various players. Starting Isaac isn’t justification for him being forward thinking. It’s expected with the extreme lack of talent. I’m fine with Bamba waiting and developing while Vuc starts.

What pisses me off is his approach to offense. Nothing he did in Charlotte was impressive with better talent. He played everyone out of position and played the roster “bigger” despite its ineffectiveness. This is what we assumed and were warned with his hiring. Even if you take everything he says to the media with a huge grain of salt, he isn’t doing himself any favors by reinforcing what people accused him of in Charlotte.

[drsd]

I would just be very surprised if Vucevic gets traded before February.

I think the Magic want to win as many games as possible and are anticipating Vucevic soaking up a lot of those center minutes.

This year the NBA trade deadline is a very large one-week BEFORE the all star week, 7 Feb. and 15 Feb., respectively.

..

[doct3r dr3]

Prediction: Mo Bamba will begin the season behind Timofey Mozgov in the rotation

[basketballRob]

And it's just like football. Rosen, Allen, and Mayfield are already starters 4 weeks into their seasons, because the veterans that have been steadily "decent" to "okay" in their careers at some point, but never great enough to fully lead a team anywhere, have crapped the bed early on. This team has a whole lot of people caping for Sam Bradford and Tyrod Taylor sort of players the last few years until they realized oops, we have to do this entire rebuild again because this slow burn approach of watching and waiting with players we already know the ceilings of (and I'm not even referring to Vucevic here, just other veterans that we gave tons of mins to), and finally now admit that they were wrong about letting the young guys build value together instead of trade them all at different times while undervaluing them and not seeing what their potential could be in first or second option roles.

The minute Vucevic starts struggling is when the fans who are on the fence about Bamba getting minutes right out of the gate will be 100% in his corner. That's the reason I see Vuc being moved or pushed to another role, because it's not fun being in that position. Unless Vuc balls out of his mind this year, the whole year, I don't see how that doesn't happen.

Coaches are always going to feel more comfortable with the players that already know the systems, have experienced live NFL ball, know what to do in most situations, it's the same in the NBA.. it's how long each franchise is willing to wait before they pull the trigger. They know what the deal is when they have a top rookie waiting in the wings.

I think the time will come when you see the infectious defense that Bamba brings. Then when we see the offense actually flows better with Bamba than Vuc.

[pepe1991]

And it's just like football. Rosen, Allen, and Mayfield are already starters 4 weeks into their seasons, because the veterans that have been steadily "decent" to "okay" in their careers at some point, but never great enough to fully lead a team anywhere, have crapped the bed early on. This team has a whole lot of people caping for Sam Bradford and Tyrod Taylor sort of players the last few years until they realized oops, we have to do this entire rebuild again because this slow burn approach of watching and waiting with players we already know the ceilings of (and I'm not even referring to Vucevic here, just other veterans that we gave tons of mins to), and finally now admit that they were wrong about letting the young guys build value together instead of trade them all at different times while undervaluing them and not seeing what their potential could be in first or second option roles.

The minute Vucevic starts struggling is when the fans who are on the fence about Bamba getting minutes right out of the gate will be 100% in his corner. That's the reason I see Vuc being moved or pushed to another role, because it's not fun being in that position. Unless Vuc balls out of his mind this year, the whole year, I don't see how that doesn't happen.

Coaches are always going to feel more comfortable with the players that already know the systems, have experienced live NFL ball, know what to do in most situations, it's the same in the NBA.. it's how long each franchise is willing to wait before they pull the trigger. They know what the deal is when they have a top rookie waiting in the wings.

I think the time will come when you see the infectious defense that Bamba brings. Then when we see the offense actually flows better with Bamba than Vuc.

There is no coach in the world who could make functional ,high efficiency offense from this Magic players.
They simply are not talented enough to run effective offense by nba standards. Period.
Team has 1 below average PG and no other ballhandlers, 2 and half good shooters.

[fendilim]

Completely validating my criticism of his hiring.

Well if that’s all it takes, it is safe to say that you would not give the guy a chance no matter what.

We literally all have agreed that preseason and media day is all words and it means nothing. Yet you get upset when Clifford says something that is the truth? Vuc is the guy who Orlando has ran the offense through for years. And until he gets traded, that’s probably still going to be the case since we have no real perimeter scoring and very young wing players.

Does it make sense to bench a starter for a new draft pick that barely weighs 225? To me, it seems like an unreasonable thing to expect from an NBA team. Would I like to see Bamba start? Yes, for sure. But why would the Magic bench Vuc, especially when they are possibly trying to trade him?

I don’t really see anything wrong with what Clifford is saying here, and I am not even a huge fan of the hire. An NBA coach is going to play his best guys.

Most people were saying that Clifford would not start Isaac yet that appears to not be the case at all. Besides Bamba not starting yet, I don’t see much wrong with the projected rotation. But I haven’t heard many people who are super critical of Clifford acknowledge that Isaac starting is great thing for us. Instead I see overreaction that Vuc is still here when there has not been one decent trade rumor that he is a part of yet.

All I’m saying is that his reputation is to lean heavily on post play and playing people out of position - per every Hornets fan that lived through his tenure.
Having Clifford say that Vuc is integral to the offense and I see quotes like this -

“Stretching the floor, obviously, that’s the way the NBA is going,” Vucevic said. “That’s something I’ve worked on a lot. But Coach, he also said he wants to use me inside a lot. He saw how effective I was in the past years, especially two or three years ago, when we played a lot inside the way the NBA was going. He wants to go back to that some: have me score some easy ones inside, be inside-out, not only outside. I think that works perfect for me. I don’t want to be just running around the 3.

That’s going to piss off fans that are ****ing tired of watching Orlando struggle offensively using an outdated scheme. Orlando was terrible when Vuc was “effective” inside because it isn’t a dynamic offense and we’ve been using it as a crutch forever... Clifford won’t help that and these quotes solidify why people weren’t and aren’t excited. Add to that the fact that he’s not opposed to playing Bamba with Vuc and it’s exactly what Hornets fans warned us about with the hire. He literally says -

”One of the things that I’m hopeful of – and I don’t know if it will be this way from Day 1 – but that we will have a package of offense set to put in where they can play together some, too. I think so much of that will be dependent on whether they can play together, which I think they can”

How can he not see that won’t be effective and hasn’t worked since Vuc has been in the team next to various players. Starting Isaac isn’t justification for him being forward thinking. It’s expected with the extreme lack of talent. I’m fine with Bamba waiting and developing while Vuc starts.

What pisses me off is his approach to offense. Nothing he did in Charlotte was impressive with better talent. He played everyone out of position and played the roster “bigger” despite its ineffectiveness. This is what we assumed and were warned with his hiring. Even if you take everything he says to the media with a huge grain of salt, he isn’t doing himself any favors by reinforcing what people accused him of in Charlotte.

I think most of us here have reservations about Vuc' game. Its not really the popular brand of basketball now.

But we don't have or need to run the popular brand of basketball.

However, in order to increase your chances on winning games, you put the ball on the hands on your "reliable" offensive players, unfortunately for our team, one of those guys is Vuc. Outside of Evan, and sometimes Simmons and DJ, there really was no one else who could be a reliable shot creator from our team last year.

What we can be sure of is management is also looking at ways to upgrade this "strength" of ours, because clearly the players we have are not enough to win games.

Unfortunately, not only will Vuc still be one of the main guys on offense, but he will also eat Bamba's minutes. This is likely until Bamba is able to prove that he deserves those minutes, and can stay on the court for a lengthy period, remember the guys look heavily exhausted in every summer league game he played despite the limited minutes.

If you listened to one of the podcast Clifford did with Woj/Lowe, when he was still the coach of the Hornets, he did mention that he doesn't believe in putting guys on the court just for the sake of playing them. In fact he even openly talked about how the Grizzlies played Jarrell Martin, a natural PF, who was played at the SF position just to get him some burn on the court. He openly said that he believes that development is also putting the young players in the right situation. This is the reason why he didn't necessarily gave Monk a lot of minutes towards the start of the season because Lamb was playing great for the team. IIRC, he even added some advanced stats to prove his point. lol

So, unfortunately, this will be another season that will test our patience as a fan, and I don't mind it. This team really needs a go-to guy and, fortunately, next year's draft applicants may just provide that.

[Catledge]

And it's just like football. Rosen, Allen, and Mayfield are already starters 4 weeks into their seasons, because the veterans that have been steadily "decent" to "okay" in their careers at some point, but never great enough to fully lead a team anywhere, have crapped the bed early on. This team has a whole lot of people caping for Sam Bradford and Tyrod Taylor sort of players the last few years until they realized oops, we have to do this entire rebuild again because this slow burn approach of watching and waiting with players we already know the ceilings of (and I'm not even referring to Vucevic here, just other veterans that we gave tons of mins to), and finally now admit that they were wrong about letting the young guys build value together instead of trade them all at different times while undervaluing them and not seeing what their potential could be in first or second option roles.

The minute Vucevic starts struggling is when the fans who are on the fence about Bamba getting minutes right out of the gate will be 100% in his corner. That's the reason I see Vuc being moved or pushed to another role, because it's not fun being in that position. Unless Vuc balls out of his mind this year, the whole year, I don't see how that doesn't happen.

Coaches are always going to feel more comfortable with the players that already know the systems, have experienced live NFL ball, know what to do in most situations, it's the same in the NBA.. it's how long each franchise is willing to wait before they pull the trigger. They know what the deal is when they have a top rookie waiting in the wings.

While I'm pretty sure I agree with you about politics, I disagree with you on this basic point of basketball analysis. I think the first rebuild failed because almost all of the young players we acquired were bad at basketball, and we traded two of the good ones.

Payton, Harkless, D Jones, KOQ, Nicholsen -- all those guys got plenty of chances to play. I don't understand the narrative on this board that insists that our young guys never get a fair shot. They got more than enough shots and turned out to be bad at playing basketball. If things go differently with Bamba, Isaac, and AG, it will be because they are better at playing basketball than those other guys are.

And although I don't think I've mentioned Payton in some time before this post, it does strike me as frustrating that people who were convinced of his greatness haven't lost any confidence in their ability to assess basketball players. So when people come up with far-fetched explanations for why Payton failed (or just denied that he failed), it feels to me that they are just looking for a way to avoid having to face the fact that they were wrong at the tops of their lungs.

[SOUL]

While I'm pretty sure I agree with you about politics, I disagree with you on this basic point of basketball analysis. I think the first rebuild failed because almost all of the young players we acquired were bad at basketball, and we traded two of the good ones.

Payton, Harkless, D Jones, KOQ, Nicholsen -- all those guys got plenty of chances to play. I don't understand the narrative on this board that insists that our young guys never get a fair shot. They got more than enough shots and turned out to be bad at playing basketball. If things go differently with Bamba, Isaac, and AG, it will be because they are better at playing basketball than those other guys are.

And although I don't think I've mentioned Payton in some time before this post, it does strike me as frustrating that people who were convinced of his greatness haven't lost any confidence in their ability to assess basketball players. So when people come up with far-fetched explanations for why Payton failed (or just denied that he failed), it feels to me that they are just looking for a way to avoid having to face the fact that they were wrong at the tops of their lungs.

Long post incoming.

The thing is, you highlighted five players, two of them who are out of the league, and the other 3 being average/useful in some areas, but not players that are going to turn a franchise around. And you kind of proved my point, Harkless/KOQ/Payton got signed and are playing on better teams where they're expected to play their role and contribute 18-28 minutes a game to help impact their team, because they've shown they can be helpful role players with the minutes they got here. Jones was a scrub, and Nicholson kind of got screwed a little bit because when he was at his most comfortable offensively, we would jerk his minutes around.

Also, chances also aren't only dictated by minutes. We clearly saw entire games where Mario, Gordon, Isaac, you name it, were wide open on many possessions with bench units to be completely ignored by the Jeff Greens and Ben Gordons of the world and have zero plays ran for them to get them involved. There are reasons why Vaughn isn't a head coach again, and Vogel and Skiles currently aren't on any teams.

Young players struggle. Mario, 5th pick, was a complete unknown to us despite having an okay rookie season for the opportunities that he got. I guarantee that any other team as bad as us would've given him more minutes to either have more rope to show us that he really isn't what we thought he was, or to prove that there is something there worth extending him for.

Tobias Harris's offensive role diminished once we starting stacking up younger players, couldn't find ways to get him in that ofensive role we needed somehow, traded him for peanuts.

Wasted half a year on Gordon at SF when we barely gave him any reps or offensive opportunities the years before that.

Traded Oladipo for no other reason than thinking he was at his ceiling offensively.

I can keep going with specifics, but a lot of the stuff I've just forgotten about. But it's just like, year after year we were bottom feeders as a team, and year after year it would take 65 games until we saw lineups with Payton/Oladipo/Tobias/Gordon/Vuc or Payton/Oladipo/Mario/Gordon or even last year with Isaac. We would see very little of these lineups we assumed would be our future, and gave them 30 games to gel together before trading one of them, replacing them with a veteran that would be off of the team/out of the league the next year, and take another 60 games to incorporate it again. The fans in turn become impatient when the lineup of the 4-5 players we want to see don't work out immediately, because they're practicing on different lineups the entire year and aren't used to playing together as that unit. I don't expect that with every new player, but if it's a lottery pick, and we're projected to be a bottom 5 team, there's absolutely no reason why we can't see our "future" lineups sooner rather than later.

Having a young team means losing a lot. Losing a lot means lottery picks with more younger players. Delaying the process of putting said young players in a lineup together until there are 10-15 games left in the season instead of giving them a bulk of the minutes and growing together is not only bad for evaluation, it backs up the entire process of growth. Those young guys that had to wait a year to actually be involved or play with the guys they envisioned playing with at the start aren't going to let some new rookie come in, no matter how ready or not he is, and let them basically skip an entire phase that they had to go through. It fostered a bad environment where everything seemed to be the slow burn approach.

Oladipo alluded to this when he got traded, and I think a big factor of why it felt sort of like they were pitted against each other was because they barely got those opportunities to play with each other, and then that weird delay of opportunity occurred.

And I disagree with your assessment of Payton, or the people that liked him. Only me and Starwipe and a few others were vocal about his usefulness up until last season (where he had his highest shooting numbers of his career, and the year before led the team in Win Shares), and never proclaimed him to be a star or somebody that is the answer at that point. We simply said the offense ran better when it was in his hands because it generated more ball movement, and have been arguing for a while not to give up on a young PG halfway through his 2nd season in the league, and that he wasn't "about to be out of the league" or the "worst player on the team" or "lazy" as people were proclaiming. If we had gotten a better PG, sure, I'm not arguing that. But for the most part, we saw what happened when our backup point guards came in: stagnant play and unwatchable games, even if our starters were just "barely watchable". This was until DJ Augustin had an actual decent showing last season and outplayed him every other game. I was annoyed about his slipping defense and not being aggressive enough at times, but I will always defend any of our players from lazy, group think mentality if it isn't truthful. Did the same thing with Jameer back in the day, and will for any player on this team if I think what people are saying are only opinions/said only out of frustration.

The real delusion is happening in these Vucevic discussions yet again, where he will put up decent counting numbers which translate in his advanced numbers (in certain areas), but real damning things like his offensive efficiency for how much of the offense he commands, overall rebounding/paint defense numbers for the team, and him being the #3 worst rim protector in the league gets ignored in favor of the other numbers that are more digestible. If he's holding the team back in certain areas, he damn well better be Jokic level on offense, and he's more like Greg Monroe. I can stomach Vuc in another role on the team, I can't if we're going to try to ram our head through this door yet again the whole year.

[MagicStarwipe]

And it's just like football. Rosen, Allen, and Mayfield are already starters 4 weeks into their seasons, because the veterans that have been steadily "decent" to "okay" in their careers at some point, but never great enough to fully lead a team anywhere, have crapped the bed early on. This team has a whole lot of people caping for Sam Bradford and Tyrod Taylor sort of players the last few years until they realized oops, we have to do this entire rebuild again because this slow burn approach of watching and waiting with players we already know the ceilings of (and I'm not even referring to Vucevic here, just other veterans that we gave tons of mins to), and finally now admit that they were wrong about letting the young guys build value together instead of trade them all at different times while undervaluing them and not seeing what their potential could be in first or second option roles.

The minute Vucevic starts struggling is when the fans who are on the fence about Bamba getting minutes right out of the gate will be 100% in his corner. That's the reason I see Vuc being moved or pushed to another role, because it's not fun being in that position. Unless Vuc balls out of his mind this year, the whole year, I don't see how that doesn't happen.

Coaches are always going to feel more comfortable with the players that already know the systems, have experienced live NFL ball, know what to do in most situations, it's the same in the NBA.. it's how long each franchise is willing to wait before they pull the trigger. They know what the deal is when they have a top rookie waiting in the wings.

While I'm pretty sure I agree with you about politics, I disagree with you on this basic point of basketball analysis. I think the first rebuild failed because almost all of the young players we acquired were bad at basketball, and we traded two of the good ones.

Payton, Harkless, D Jones, KOQ, Nicholsen -- all those guys got plenty of chances to play. I don't understand the narrative on this board that insists that our young guys never get a fair shot. They got more than enough shots and turned out to be bad at playing basketball. If things go differently with Bamba, Isaac, and AG, it will be because they are better at playing basketball than those other guys are.

And although I don't think I've mentioned Payton in some time before this post, it does strike me as frustrating that people who were convinced of his greatness haven't lost any confidence in their ability to assess basketball players. So when people come up with far-fetched explanations for why Payton failed (or just denied that he failed), it feels to me that they are just looking for a way to avoid having to face the fact that they were wrong at the tops of their lungs.

Nobody that defended Payton ever said anything about "greatness". People just don't seem to listen to the points being made and instead just want to win an internet argument. Nobody is "wrong" about anything. I still believe he's a good player and it hasn't been proven that he isn't. More often than not he has been a positive impact player on some awful teams playing for about 5 different coaches in 4 years. Pretty sure Blitz, SOUL, myself and a few others still feel the same way. And we never said anything that wasn't totally reasonable. For instance, none of us ever argued that his defense wasn't slipping since his first season.

[MAGICian619]

The way people bring up Payton when the discussion is squarely on Vucevic is like Trump supporters still bringing up Hilary because they can't face the facts.

HAHAHAHA. You, Mr. Hilary supporter, are the ones opposed to facts. Go look at EVERY key economic indicator for some facts. Or just go watch CNN and let them convince you the world is burning. Save your self righteous posts for a different forum.

Basketball please.

[j-ragg]

The way people bring up Payton when the discussion is squarely on Vucevic is like Trump supporters still bringing up Hilary because they can't face the facts.

HAHAHAHA. You, Mr. Hilary supporter, are the ones opposed to facts. Go look at EVERY key economic indicator for some facts. Or just go watch CNN and let them convince you the world is burning. Save your self righteous posts for a different forum.

Basketball please.

Relax man it was a joke. No one cares who anyone supports on here.

Unless you support Vuc. Then you can gtfo.

[MagicFan101]

Prediction: Mo Bamba will begin the season behind Timofey Mozgov in the rotation

Barring injury, there is next to no chance whatsoever of this happening. Bamba behind Vuc and even Birch? Perhaps. But Mozgov is a statue on the bench brought in only because he is more content with such a role than Biz was and provides less of a distraction or lockeroon disturbance.