Knightro wrote:Xatticus wrote:And I'd add Doncic and Young weren't out of our range. We very easily could've had either player, but our front office spent the year evaluating and we ended up picking sixth. So I don't like the defense that they were already off the board when we picked. Doncic was still available on draft night.
There are plenty of things to justifiably criticize this front office about, but this one seems unfair.
Are you criticizing the Magic's front office because they didn't lose more in Year 1? I mean they only won 25 games in Weltman and Hammond's first year. Yes, it was silly for them to publicly call it an "evaluation" year, but they still were still really bad and it was essentially a tanking season. They were one of the five worst teams in the league.
It was just unfortunate luck that a bunch of other teams were also in the tanking business that year. Nine teams finished with sub 30 wins, which was the most in nearly a decade.
Could they have actively tried to tank harder? Maybe, but can you really blame the front office for beating the Mavericks and Wizards late in the year when guys like Purvis and Artis were playing huge minutes?
Precisely. And I would argue that it has been the most egregious mistake they have made as everything thereafter can only be rationalized when you fail to appreciate the context that led to those subsequent decisions.
We didn't tank the season. We were just really bad. It would've been exceptionally easy for our front office to ensure that we had one of the top picks. If you were to believe some around here, we could drop 15 games in the standings just by trading away Vucevic. We knew that draft was loaded and had potentially generational talents at the top. We could've traded away some of our vets for future assets. Vucevic's contract, in particular, was very movable. I waited for some activity up til the deadline, but our front office sat on their hands and
evaluated. The margin between fourth and sixth in the draft proved minuscule in the end, but it didn't have to be. Not for us. That margin was the difference between Doncic or Young and Bamba. Everyone points to the Dallas game, but we had an entire season to embrace an obvious opportunity and waited just long enough to blow it.
It didn't take much foresight to appreciate the opportunity at the time, yet here we are. Nobody would choose our vets over Doncic, but through a series of shortsighted decisions, that is essentially what we have done.
"Xatticus has always been, in my humble opinion best poster here. Should write articles or something."
-pepe1991