yoyojw17 wrote:Well.... we are not a prime destination for free agents. Why not resign a player that is already on your team that became an all star. It made sense to me.... as you don't pressure bamba... give him time to grow.... stay competitive.... and then trade him when mo can take over. Then injuries and everything piled up with mo.... and that left with a safety net. Needless to ssay.... mo needs to work through some stuff. setting screens ... defensive effort etc. and he won't just be gifted anything or coddled. At the end of the day... this could still be the right way of handling it all. we shall see. Look at steve kerr and wiseman. no one will ever say that looney is a more talented player... but he is what they need right now to win.
*Sigh*
Everything you're saying is revisionist based on how the 18-19 season actually played out. Which is fine, but I'm talking about what the Magic's thought process should have been when the Magic were actually on the clock in the 2018 draft.
The Magic were coming off 29 and 25 win seasons when they drafted Bamba. Vucevic at the time was also a zero time all-star heading into the last year of his contract.
The only scenario that made sense was Bamba is Vucevic's backup Year 1 and takes over as the starter in year 2 with Vucevic either traded or gone in free agency.
If there was any indication that Vucevic could play well enough to where he'd be resigned *or* Bamba wouldn't be ready to assume a bigger role by year 2, then Bamba just shouldn't have been the pick at 6.
And I say that knowing what we know now about Bamba, that had the Magic dumped Vucevic and given Bamba a bigger role in 19-20 that the team would have almost certainly been really bad (had Bamba been able to handle it period).
