pepe1991 wrote:1& 2 point : Magic assets were far superior than Dallas had. Matter of fact Dallas only asset were 2018 draft pick , random 2019 pick and Dennis Smith.
Magic, by beating them, pushed them into having better draft pick and esencially helped them get in a spot where they can make a move for Doncic.
I ask again, what does this have to do with Bamba?
The game you're referring to in 2018 btw...
Vucevic, Fournier, Isaac, Simmons and Ross all sat out. So five of the Magic's primary 8-man rotation didn't even play that game.
The Magic played 9 players that night. Just two years later only three of the nine guys who played (Gordon, Augustin, Biyombo) are even NBA rotation players. Several of them - Artis, Mack, Purvis - aren't even in the NBA.
I get that fans want to pin a ton of blame on Weltman and Hammond for not forcing Vogel to tank harder late that season, but they finished 5-14 over their last 19 games for goodness sake. That's a .263 winning percentage which is the equivalent to 21.5 wins over a whole season. They were horrible and sitting guys out routinely.
The Mavericks, who openly admitted in public that they were tanking, finished with the exact same 5-14 record over their final 19 games as the Magic did. That includes beating a 49 win Portland team at home on April 3rd.
But regardless of all of that, it still has nothing to do with Mo Bamba the player. You're again confirming that the fact the front office didn't handle the end of the 17-18 season the way you would have liked has made you more biased against the player they ended up selecting.
pepe1991 wrote:I was not high on Young, that's not secret, but it's not like i'm scout. Or anything more but just a fan. It's not hard to look back two years later and see who's mistakes are worst: random fan or general GM and president of basketball operations.
As usual, Magic front office showed zero desire to make high risk moves and just kept their pick, moved nothing and drafted center. Witch is mistake in itself, even if you ignore fact that SGA ( borderline allstar 2 years later ) was passed on, while in mean time Magic were starting DJ Augustin at PG.
All I would say to this is that you don't know what types of conversations the Magic did or did not have. Orlando may have very well been calling Phoenix, Sacramento, Atlanta, Memphis and Dallas and simply got rebuffed.
Trading up in the NBA draft, particularly in the top 5, is pretty rare thing. If you go back to the last 20 years of drafts which is 100 top five picks, there have only been six trade ups in the top 5 involving draft picks. If you dive a little deeper, there's only been
one trade, the Jazz in 2005, where a team used a pick outside of the top 5 to get into the top 5.
2004: Charlotte traded 4 and 33 for 2
2005: Utah traded 6, 27 and a 2006 1st for 3
2006: Portland traded 4 and Victor Khryapa for 2
2008: Memphis traded 5, Mike Miller, Brian Cardinal, and Jason Collins for 3
2017: Boston traded 3 and 2019 1st for 1
2018: Dallas traded 5 and a 2019 1st for 3
There have been quite a few veteran for draft pick swaps (Ray Allen, Elton Brand, Kevin Love, etc) in the top 5, but those are different things entirely.
I fully admit that I personally misevaluated SGA and how good he would be. I didn't think he was worthy of being picked 6th and that appears to be have been very wrong. But four other teams also passed on him after the Magic, so clearly there was something in his evaluation where teams didn't think he was worth a top 10 pick. I also think it's worth noting that SGA is not playing PG pretty much at all. 97% of his minutes this year came at either SG or SF, with just 3% at PG. Seems like pairing him with a hall of fame point guard has done wonders for his development off the ball.
pepe1991 wrote:3. That's nothing but personal opinion. He, today, at age of 22 would not log 20 mpg on any NBA team because he does not have BBIQ , skill nor stamina to play more. In mean time 3 players at age of 22 were allstars this year. That's high celing. Not player that is 14 mpg bench warmer on 30-36 team.
„We have no idea what Bamba could do with starter minutes because he's literally never been put in a position to play more than 25 minutes in a game yet in his career.“
Actually just a notion that Steve Clfford refused to start him after Vuc got hurt says a lot about where he is at as a player. Where we were starting Birch over him.
Why not?
The sample size is very small, but in the 10 games Bamba has played 20+ minutes in his career, he's averaged 9 PPG, 7 RPG, 2 BLK and only 2 fouls with a TS% of .615 in 22.4 MPG.
Bamba should be playing more than he is and the only reason he isn't is because the Magic opted to resign Vucevic and you can't play them both at the same time.
I like Steve Clifford. I think he squeezes as much blood as possible out of whatever stone that he's handed, but you and I both know that guy is going to put an emphasis on winning ahead of player development 100 times out of 100.
pepe1991 wrote:And at the end of a day we talk about 5,5 ppg player… Five point five . Let's stop any sorto f crazy talk and Gobert comparisons. It's getting silly. If he is some massive superstar that is ready to break , he would eat Vuc alive at every practice to the point where it would be embarrassing for Clifford to not play him more. In reality , matched against Maxi Kleber, guy looked like 2011 Dirk was back.
Or game where 6'7 Jamyahal Green was playing bully- ball against him in post .
Or game where he fouled out in 13 min.
Or game where he fouled out in some sort of record time, 10:03 min ( 1 point ,6 fouls)
Come on man, he is second year player, but he is 9th to 10th man in rotation of team that should not be in playoffs.
You do realize that Rudy Gobert at the same age played all of 434 minutes for the *season* and averaged a whopping 2.3 PPG.
I'm not suggesting Bamba is going to be some future superstar, but there's no reason why he couldn't be a starting center *right now* for a rebuilding club and become more than that down the road for a winning club.
The only reason he isn't playing more right now because the Magic have a 100M dollar veteran center in front of him who plays 33 MPG. That's it.
