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BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways

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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#241 » by Max Power » Tue Jun 8, 2021 1:27 pm

Kingdom, gotta agree with you here. Clifford taking that team to two playoff appearances and a division title is probably the only reason Weltman and Hammond are still here. I give Steve Clifford the credit for that, not them. I don’t blame Clifford for wanting out after they tore down the team mid season. It’s hard for a coach to stay motivated when it’s obvious the higher ups have started over. The Magic could have easily been a top 3 lottery team and kept Vucevic. Adding a Cunningham or Green to a team with a returning Fultz and Issac could have been a great way to stay in the thick of the playoffs for several years. I’m sure just trading Fournier and Gordon would have accomplished that. So I have no bad feelings on Steve Clifford. He’s almost 60 and leading a team that’s destined for 2-3 years in the top of the lottery is a crappy way to work the tail end of a career. A younger guy paying his coaching dues is just fine by me.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#242 » by pepe1991 » Tue Jun 8, 2021 6:11 pm

In truth, Weltman and Hammond still have jobs because of Cliff. They have had 4 years to add a star to this roster and have failed miserably. Their drafts have been abysmal. Their most promising talent -- Isaac -- never plays and there's a good chance he will never be a dependable player in this league. Bamba is so bad they didn't even feel the need to shut him down during the tank because they knew he wouldn't lead the team to any wins (which was true)


excellent post
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#243 » by RookieStar » Tue Jun 8, 2021 8:23 pm

Magic_Kingdom wrote:
Xatticus wrote:
pepe1991 wrote:
Cry me a river.
Since when being 11th among 15 teams, 5 games bleow .500 "playoff conteding" on West where 8th seed ened up having 38-35 record.
There weren't even in playin tournament at that moment.

Person who argued that Magic are bad and need complete tear down, sitting at 9-14 record with half of roster injuries, is also making claims that 19-24 team on west was playoffs contender. Hilarious double standards.

Take your bogus claims, bull*** takes and biased nonsense somwhere else.


It's pretty good when you are projected to have the worst record in the NBA by pretty much every outlet before the season began. You are moving goalposts again. Who cares about .500? Two-thirds of NBA teams make the playoffs now.

OKC had already torn down their roster and they were 4.5 games better than Orlando when they shut down SGA. Orlando hadn't even begun to tank at this point. You are **** on Daigneault and praising Clifford even though it's ridiculously obvious which team was better coached this year.


I don't know if it's "ridiculously obvious" that OKC was better coached simply because they were 4.5 games better than Orlando when they shut down SGA. At that point Orlando had been playing the whole season without its starting PG and starting PF -- its two most talented young players -- Fultz and Isaac.

Cliff took Hennigan's scrub roster that no coach could win with and led them to the playoffs 2 consecutive years. In Year 3 we all know what happened. He ended up with a roster-full of 10-day contracts and rookies, they traded his only all-star, and they shelved healthy players to tank. I don't see how anyone can say Cliff did a bad job or this was his fault.

In truth, Weltman and Hammond still have jobs because of Cliff. They have had 4 years to add a star to this roster and have failed miserably. Their drafts have been abysmal. Their most promising talent -- Isaac -- never plays and there's a good chance he will never be a dependable player in this league. Bamba is so bad they didn't even feel the need to shut him down during the tank because they knew he wouldn't lead the team to any wins (which was true). Cliff's 2 playoff appearances, along with the improvement of Vuc and Fultz under Cliff, bought Weltman and Hammond a lot of time.


Great post and insight. Cliff came in when the FO/owner wanted us in the playoffs. He did it. Despite haters denying it, we were on the upwards swing UNTIL the injuries hit with our promising players. Even then he still scrapped and fought and got us into the POs again. WeHam was lucky Cliff was able to do his job well. Now that we are looking at another direction AND Cliff does not want the growing pains attached to it, then we parted ways.

However sas far as I am concerned, Cliff was a good coach for us and did his job well.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#244 » by Bensational » Tue Jun 8, 2021 10:12 pm

I wonder if people realise that they have to use ‘the playoffs’ as a euphemism for Cliff’s success because he only had one winning season, behind a contract year for Vuc and Ross?

He did his job, I liked his candid nature, would love to grab a beer with him, but I’m not going to pretend we’ve lost a successful coach with a track record for winning.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#245 » by KillMonger » Wed Jun 9, 2021 1:30 am

Bensational wrote:I wonder if people realise that they have to use ‘the playoffs’ as a euphemism for Cliff’s success because he only had one winning season, behind a contract year for Vuc and Ross?

He did his job, I liked his candid nature, would love to grab a beer with him, but I’m not going to pretend we’ve lost a successful coach with a track record for winning.

excellent post
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#246 » by basketballRob » Wed Jun 9, 2021 1:38 am

pepe1991 wrote:Most coaches will probably hope for Bucks job as Bud is probably goner by the next week.
Weham is probably waiting for Bud to become available.

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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#247 » by Nyce_1 » Wed Jun 9, 2021 2:58 am

I really don't get the desire to allow nostalgia to drive your preference for a former magic player to be named coach.

Vanterpool played for Messina. Would be interesting if he's able to pull him as lead assistant away from Spurs.

I'm pretty interested in Pat Delany. Put in solid time as an assistant, Steve speaks highly of him, came up through the Heat ranks, head coaching experience. Keeping the same staff with more offensive creativity is intriguing.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#248 » by DiplomaticMagic » Wed Jun 9, 2021 3:59 am

Its hard to judge coaches because everyone thought Frank Vogel would be a great coach for us, and he was terrible.

I think the only coaches I will be super against is Stotts and Buldenhozer. Also hate Jason Kidd as a person. Anybody else would be fine
Stop playing Fultz
Play AB and Goga
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#249 » by pepe1991 » Wed Jun 9, 2021 6:01 am

Bensational wrote:I wonder if people realise that they have to use ‘the playoffs’ as a euphemism for Cliff’s success because he only had one winning season, behind a contract year for Vuc and Ross?

He did his job, I liked his candid nature, would love to grab a beer with him, but I’m not going to pretend we’ve lost a successful coach with a track record for winning.


He is very,very good coach. He took on 2 sore losers, Hornets and Magic, and in span over 1 year pretty much turned sore losers into basketball roster that is prideful and plays for something.
You have to keep perspective. Coaching job in nba is tied into quality of players.
Vogel went from 2 ECF to Orlando and esencially buried us. Than he went to LA, with Davis and Lebron and won championship.

Clifford took on Bobcats that had 21-61 record and turned them into 43-39 roster next year, by adding not a single talented player.

Orlando had 35-47/ 29-53/25-57 seasons before Clifford with similar roster won 42 games. We literally were getting worst every year for 3 years before he took over.

But Clifford in both situations never had elite players. He had bunch of castoffs, draft busts and odd mix of talent. However, goes without saying under him Walker and Vučević turned into allstars.

Is he perfect? No. His offense is simplistic, he relies too much on defense, his drop coverage gets under people's skin fast.
But he keeps people in check and he hasn't trown anybody under a bus, as coach for 8 years, that turned into good player later.
From Noa Vonleh, Monk, Bamba, Biyombo... He has good eye for guys who won't make any difference .

Under him, Fultz played first serious basketball min in his life. Went from "worst bust since Oden" to "ok, he might be servicable", under him Isaac's game improved every year. Under him Gordon stopped being Paul Gordon and become Work Hard Gordon. Terrence Ross averaged career highs in points, rebounds ,assists, steals, blocks and efficiency.

Playoffs on East don't mean much, true. But Magic, prior Clifford failed to get in playoffs for 6 years straight.
Clifford, as coach, was best coach Orlando had since SVG.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#250 » by GelbeWand09 » Wed Jun 9, 2021 6:47 am

RookieStar wrote:
Magic_Kingdom wrote:
Xatticus wrote:
It's pretty good when you are projected to have the worst record in the NBA by pretty much every outlet before the season began. You are moving goalposts again. Who cares about .500? Two-thirds of NBA teams make the playoffs now.

OKC had already torn down their roster and they were 4.5 games better than Orlando when they shut down SGA. Orlando hadn't even begun to tank at this point. You are **** on Daigneault and praising Clifford even though it's ridiculously obvious which team was better coached this year.


I don't know if it's "ridiculously obvious" that OKC was better coached simply because they were 4.5 games better than Orlando when they shut down SGA. At that point Orlando had been playing the whole season without its starting PG and starting PF -- its two most talented young players -- Fultz and Isaac.

Cliff took Hennigan's scrub roster that no coach could win with and led them to the playoffs 2 consecutive years. In Year 3 we all know what happened. He ended up with a roster-full of 10-day contracts and rookies, they traded his only all-star, and they shelved healthy players to tank. I don't see how anyone can say Cliff did a bad job or this was his fault.

In truth, Weltman and Hammond still have jobs because of Cliff. They have had 4 years to add a star to this roster and have failed miserably. Their drafts have been abysmal. Their most promising talent -- Isaac -- never plays and there's a good chance he will never be a dependable player in this league. Bamba is so bad they didn't even feel the need to shut him down during the tank because they knew he wouldn't lead the team to any wins (which was true). Cliff's 2 playoff appearances, along with the improvement of Vuc and Fultz under Cliff, bought Weltman and Hammond a lot of time.


Great post and insight. Cliff came in when the FO/owner wanted us in the playoffs. He did it. Despite haters denying it, we were on the upwards swing UNTIL the injuries hit with our promising players. Even then he still scrapped and fought and got us into the POs again. WeHam was lucky Cliff was able to do his job well. Now that we are looking at another direction AND Cliff does not want the growing pains attached to it, then we parted ways.

However sas far as I am concerned, Cliff was a good coach for us and did his job well.


2018-19 42-40 with healthiest roster in the leaque
2019-20 33-40 :o

Woudnt say upward swing
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#251 » by pepe1991 » Wed Jun 9, 2021 7:13 am

GelbeWand09 wrote:
RookieStar wrote:
Magic_Kingdom wrote:
I don't know if it's "ridiculously obvious" that OKC was better coached simply because they were 4.5 games better than Orlando when they shut down SGA. At that point Orlando had been playing the whole season without its starting PG and starting PF -- its two most talented young players -- Fultz and Isaac.

Cliff took Hennigan's scrub roster that no coach could win with and led them to the playoffs 2 consecutive years. In Year 3 we all know what happened. He ended up with a roster-full of 10-day contracts and rookies, they traded his only all-star, and they shelved healthy players to tank. I don't see how anyone can say Cliff did a bad job or this was his fault.

In truth, Weltman and Hammond still have jobs because of Cliff. They have had 4 years to add a star to this roster and have failed miserably. Their drafts have been abysmal. Their most promising talent -- Isaac -- never plays and there's a good chance he will never be a dependable player in this league. Bamba is so bad they didn't even feel the need to shut him down during the tank because they knew he wouldn't lead the team to any wins (which was true). Cliff's 2 playoff appearances, along with the improvement of Vuc and Fultz under Cliff, bought Weltman and Hammond a lot of time.


Great post and insight. Cliff came in when the FO/owner wanted us in the playoffs. He did it. Despite haters denying it, we were on the upwards swing UNTIL the injuries hit with our promising players. Even then he still scrapped and fought and got us into the POs again. WeHam was lucky Cliff was able to do his job well. Now that we are looking at another direction AND Cliff does not want the growing pains attached to it, then we parted ways.

However sas far as I am concerned, Cliff was a good coach for us and did his job well.


2018-19 42-40 with healthiest roster in the leaque
2019-20 33-40 :o

Woudnt say upward swing


That year our starters alone missed 70 games, mostly Isaac, 40. 3 of our key rotation bench peaces ( on paper) also got hurt for exstended time. Augustin, MCW and Aminu, who basically never played healthy for us.

I mean, our playoff starting 5 was had Gery Clark and James Ennis :lol: Wes iwundu was playing 15 mpg :lol:
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#252 » by pepe1991 » Wed Jun 9, 2021 7:16 am

Jordan Schultz: Per league sources, #Nets assistant coach Mike D’Antoni is receiving interest for the #Blazers, #Celtics and #Magic HC jobs. The Nets will grant interview requests for D’Antoni — following the playoffs.

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Jesus, he is 70 years old. Our front office during draft night

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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#253 » by RookieStar » Wed Jun 9, 2021 7:28 am

GelbeWand09 wrote:
RookieStar wrote:
Magic_Kingdom wrote:
I don't know if it's "ridiculously obvious" that OKC was better coached simply because they were 4.5 games better than Orlando when they shut down SGA. At that point Orlando had been playing the whole season without its starting PG and starting PF -- its two most talented young players -- Fultz and Isaac.

Cliff took Hennigan's scrub roster that no coach could win with and led them to the playoffs 2 consecutive years. In Year 3 we all know what happened. He ended up with a roster-full of 10-day contracts and rookies, they traded his only all-star, and they shelved healthy players to tank. I don't see how anyone can say Cliff did a bad job or this was his fault.

In truth, Weltman and Hammond still have jobs because of Cliff. They have had 4 years to add a star to this roster and have failed miserably. Their drafts have been abysmal. Their most promising talent -- Isaac -- never plays and there's a good chance he will never be a dependable player in this league. Bamba is so bad they didn't even feel the need to shut him down during the tank because they knew he wouldn't lead the team to any wins (which was true). Cliff's 2 playoff appearances, along with the improvement of Vuc and Fultz under Cliff, bought Weltman and Hammond a lot of time.


Great post and insight. Cliff came in when the FO/owner wanted us in the playoffs. He did it. Despite haters denying it, we were on the upwards swing UNTIL the injuries hit with our promising players. Even then he still scrapped and fought and got us into the POs again. WeHam was lucky Cliff was able to do his job well. Now that we are looking at another direction AND Cliff does not want the growing pains attached to it, then we parted ways.

However sas far as I am concerned, Cliff was a good coach for us and did his job well.


2018-19 42-40 with healthiest roster in the leaque
2019-20 33-40 :o

Woudnt say upward swing


Cmon are you really just gonna base it on record? And not the injuries that we had? We lost JI, AG for some time, Aminu, etc I thought that PF position was cursed or something.

Not to mention mcw and a merry-go-round of who is next injured.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#254 » by SOUL » Wed Jun 9, 2021 8:16 am

As always, it's not a black and white situation. I wouldn't consider him a winning coach, as in someone who has a special basketball mind or someone who can draw up a brilliant play no matter who is on the floor, but most coaches look good because of the players they have, not because of their prowess. Most teams just hope to have a coach that isn't a complete fraud.

Clifford is good at holding players accountable, can teach guys the basics: working hard, playing with energy and effort, and has a very rigid style of coaching that all of his teams apply... meaning low turnovers, not getting into foul trouble, solid rebounding + defense. Unfortunately, the game is very different today so a lot of things he didn't really pay attention to were never going to get fixed. Specifically three point defense which we were pathetic at, and we had an offense that led the league in long twos and they didn't care enough to tell the players not to do that. It's not a bad team thing, a lot of bad teams played modern ball (threes/dunks) and sucked, we knew how inefficient our offensive style was and still decided we should take long twos as a primary option. That is coaching. Even if we had not many great shooters, miss threes not long twos.

Cliff is a good guy, solid coach that isn't going to harm a franchise by joining it. Like we say with some prospects, he's a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser. He can get a lot out of an average team as long as everybody is bought in.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#255 » by jvdas » Wed Jun 9, 2021 10:13 am

KillMonger wrote:Thoughts on ettore Messina?


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Would love to have Messina. But he is Coach and PBO at Olimpia Milano since 2019, so don't think he's available.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#256 » by Magic#1 » Wed Jun 9, 2021 3:54 pm

pepe1991 wrote:Jordan Schultz: Per league sources, #Nets assistant coach Mike D’Antoni is receiving interest for the #Blazers, #Celtics and #Magic HC jobs. The Nets will grant interview requests for D’Antoni — following the playoffs.

Image

Jesus, he is 70 years old. Our front office during draft night

Image


I can't imagine D'antoni being interested in us unless he wants to just ease into retirement. I'm not particularly interested in him, either.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#257 » by RookieStar » Wed Jun 9, 2021 8:20 pm

Magic#1 wrote:
pepe1991 wrote:Jordan Schultz: Per league sources, #Nets assistant coach Mike D’Antoni is receiving interest for the #Blazers, #Celtics and #Magic HC jobs. The Nets will grant interview requests for D’Antoni — following the playoffs.

Image

Jesus, he is 70 years old. Our front office during draft night

Image


I can't imagine D'antoni being interested in us unless he wants to just ease into retirement. I'm not particularly interested in him, either.


Well I did hear Florida is THE PLACE for retirement homes?
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#258 » by Magic_Kingdom » Wed Jun 9, 2021 8:59 pm

Bensational wrote:I wonder if people realise that they have to use ‘the playoffs’ as a euphemism for Cliff’s success because he only had one winning season, behind a contract year for Vuc and Ross?

He did his job, I liked his candid nature, would love to grab a beer with him, but I’m not going to pretend we’ve lost a successful coach with a track record for winning.


It's all relative. A coach's success should be judged by what he does with the roster he is given and how much the team improves. Making the playoffs is not the only benchmark of a coach's success, but with *this* roster it was a marked improvement over the previous six seasons where the *only* significant difference was the coach. Vogel, Skiles, Borrego and Vaughn all coached the same core of Vucevic, Fournier and Gordon, and none of them came close to making the playoffs. This was still Hennigan's roster, arguably considered the worst team in the league before Cliff was hired.

Another thing to look at is player development. Philly gave us Fultz for nothing because almost everyone agreed his career was over, and he found his game again as Cliff's starting PG. Vucevic improved significantly under Cliff. This year wasn't a contract year and he was playing lights-out -- 24.5, 11.8 and 3.8 with 117 made threes in 44 games before being traded. Under Cliff, Vuc went from "we won't get anything of value for him" to two first-round picks (including a high lottery pick) and a prospect. Fragility aside, Isaac was developing nicely under Cliff and started almost every game he played. Cliff was hired, in part, because of his past success with big men as an assistant, so it's probably no coincidence that Vuc and Isaac improved under Cliff.

I suspect the rest of the league views this as the Magic losing a successful coach, even if not all the fans see it that way. I don't think he was happy with the tanking so it became impossible for him to stay, but he'll get another job soon.
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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#259 » by basketballRob » Wed Jun 9, 2021 9:02 pm

The obvious is that we still retained the coaching staff. So we can just do nothing and Corbin will be the coach next season. I assume they all have one more season remaining.

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Re: BREAKING NEWS- Magic & Clifford agree to part ways 

Post#260 » by Knightro » Wed Jun 9, 2021 11:58 pm

Read on Twitter


I would imagine the Magic will have interest in all of these guys. Billups probably wouldn't want to come here, but the other guys could all get interviews.

Charles Lee in particular was a guy that ESPN featured in one of their articles as a future head coach.

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