2024-2025 Regular Season Game 74: Dallas Mavericks (35-38) at Orlando Magic (35-38) - 7pm

[Skybox]

I just don't know how Paolo is being blamed for everything.

Banchero is now on five straight 30+ point games.
and fifteen straight 20 point games (with two 40s in this run).

16 games ago, he went for 19 points, in a blowout win, which is why the 20 pointer streak isn't much longer.

I don't get it either, I feel like it's more on the guy we paid 25m a year to putting up zeros on the stat sheet and Gary Harris getting paid to do cardio and not having a point guard. Paolo is the least of this teams problems.

I didn’t see the game, but the box score says a couple of 6’1 guys had career nights…where are our long lockdown guards?

[Last Guardian]

This season makes it fairly obvious to upgrade the surrounding players, but ultimately I just don't think Franz/Paolo is going to work anyway. Upgrade the cast, maybe 50 game win seasons and maybe second round. Just doesn't look like it will ever be good enough to do real damage.

[tiderulz]

once again, poor guard play cost us the game

[T-Cat]

Stealth tank. If Sacramento beats us, then we'll be in 11th in the tank race. Chicago, Dallas, and Sacramento will be ahead of us.

Sent from my SM-G781U using RealGM mobile app

Markelle Fultz has that game circled on his calendar

[pepe1991]

During the 3-game winning streak, by the eye-test, the Magic was running more PnRs, running more fast-breaks, and getting efficient scoring from bench players.

To quote Steele: Is this anything?

Who defends you matters.
3 wins streak vs:

Wizards- just allowed 162 points -top 5 most points allowed in nba history (without OT) and Wizards worst loss in franchise history. They are THAT bad.

Lakers- no PF/C in sight.

Hornets - team that lost: 35 to Clippers, 32 to Hawks, 35 to OKC, 17 to Heat ( and somehow beat Knicks )


Dallas team is crippled ( no PF, C backup C available) but they have actual defensive principles, where other 3 previous teams have no clue what they are doing. Lakers players understand concept of defense, but don't have players to make it work. I mean, their best individual defender is 40 and he hasn't been good on defense for 5 years at least.

That means nothing. We lost to the Trailblazers, Jazz, and Toronto and they had no defensive identity. Each game lost was due to shooting.

Toronto is best defense in nba post all star game, their whole roster has similar build to our own- tall defenders. It's just shameful in fashion we lost to them, where they threw game by benching starters and we couldn't win.

Post all star- Blazers are 12th defense.

Jazz suck, i have no argument there

[eyriq]

KCP was pretty criminal last night. Could have survived if Franz wasn't equally terrible.

I'm curious what they do with Cole the rest of the season. Can we afford to bench CoJo?

[JoshuaPotter]

Game thoughts :

Winnable game is going to be filed tome as "can't win them all"

We know exactly what the problems with the roster are, so debating it ad nauseam doesn't really help my chest pains.

My thought? Again, "can't win em all" the surrounding roster and chemistry just isn't good enough to prevail 100% of the time in these defense intense games. This if I recall correctly reared its head the first game Paolo was injured against the Bulls where both teams went scoreless. At first I thought this would be a feature, because then the Paolo train makes sense, but we just cannot keep that level of defense effort up game to game and team to team, therefore, we stop scoring, they pull ahead.

[JoshuaPotter]

KCP was pretty criminal last night. Could have survived if Franz wasn't equally terrible.

I'm curious what they do with Cole the rest of the season. Can we afford to bench CoJo?

Probably can't afford to bench him. My opinion.

KCP / Harris / and a rare stinker from Franz cost us the game here. This is the challenge we need to find ways to overcome. I would also like to bring up "early foul trouble" as a potential reason for losing the game.

[Fortune Teller]

I would bench KCP for AB at this point, and that is not something I would've said a month ago. KCP has deserved to be benched all season, but there wasn't a viable replacement to make it worth it. Black has strung together enough good games to at least give it a shot, and you certainly don't have to worry about disrupting any (non-existent) chemistry.

[eyriq]

KCP was pretty criminal last night. Could have survived if Franz wasn't equally terrible.

I'm curious what they do with Cole the rest of the season. Can we afford to bench CoJo?

Probably can't afford to bench him. My opinion.

KCP / Harris / and a rare stinker from Franz cost us the game here. This is the challenge we need to find ways to overcome. I would also like to bring up "early foul trouble" as a potential reason for losing the game.

If I'm coach I start AB and bring Jett, Goga, JI, and TDS off the bench the rest of the way.

No real great options TBH so double down on development.

[JoshuaPotter]

KCP was pretty criminal last night. Could have survived if Franz wasn't equally terrible.

I'm curious what they do with Cole the rest of the season. Can we afford to bench CoJo?

Probably can't afford to bench him. My opinion.

KCP / Harris / and a rare stinker from Franz cost us the game here. This is the challenge we need to find ways to overcome. I would also like to bring up "early foul trouble" as a potential reason for losing the game.

If I'm coach I start AB and bring Jett, Goga, JI, and TDS off the bench the rest of the way.

No real great options TBH so double down on development.

That is a big problem though. They are talking about winning for a higher seed.

[CalOrl11]

I fell asleep in the second half, and it appears half the players did as well. A lot of zeros on that box score.

[eyriq]

Probably can't afford to bench him. My opinion.

KCP / Harris / and a rare stinker from Franz cost us the game here. This is the challenge we need to find ways to overcome. I would also like to bring up "early foul trouble" as a potential reason for losing the game.

If I'm coach I start AB and bring Jett, Goga, JI, and TDS off the bench the rest of the way.

No real great options TBH so double down on development.

That is a big problem though. They are talking about winning for a higher seed.

CoJo, Cole, Harris and Caleb are not moving the needle from a competitive perspective. They aren't good.

[Bergmaniac]

Just an awful loss and it was mostly because poor shooting and bad turnovers. Losing to this Dallas team which is so short-handed and with AD clearly very far from top fitness and mostly a negative on the court (he was 5/19,, -9, wasn't moving well at all and didn't do much on D either) is pretty embarassing. And as usual we started reverting to bad habits when Dallas made a run, playing too slowly. A play which exemplifies this was late in the 3rd quarter after Dallas had made a run to cut our lead down to 3, Mosley took a timeout, and we got a freaking shot clock violation out of it after it took us 16 seconds to get the ball to Paolo to really start our play, he had to rush it, kicked it out with only 3 seconds left to a teammate who wasn't open and that was it for it this possession.

[magik9113]

I fell asleep in the second half, and it appears half the players did as well. A lot of zeros on that box score.

consider yourself lucky

[JoshuaPotter]

If I'm coach I start AB and bring Jett, Goga, JI, and TDS off the bench the rest of the way.

No real great options TBH so double down on development.

That is a big problem though. They are talking about winning for a higher seed.

CoJo, Cole, Harris and Caleb are not moving the needle from a competitive perspective. They aren't good.

Cojo is fine for what we have asked and what we pay. Caleb is at least hot right now.

Harris, KCP, Cole however.

[eyriq]

That is a big problem though. They are talking about winning for a higher seed.

CoJo, Cole, Harris and Caleb are not moving the needle from a competitive perspective. They aren't good.

Cojo is fine for what we have asked and what we pay. Caleb is at least hot right now.

Harris, KCP, Cole however.

We pay him to be a third stringer is the point

[KillMonger]

Read on Twitter

[JoshuaPotter]

CoJo, Cole, Harris and Caleb are not moving the needle from a competitive perspective. They aren't good.

Cojo is fine for what we have asked and what we pay. Caleb is at least hot right now.

Harris, KCP, Cole however.

We pay him to be a third stringer is the point

I know that is what makes me right about Cojo. He plays above his value.

Disgusting really.

[drsd]

KCP was pretty criminal last night. Could have survived if Franz wasn't equally terrible.

I'm curious what they do with Cole the rest of the season. Can we afford to bench CoJo?

Bench Harris and let Anthony go 4-12 as a backup SG. It's an improvement over watching a zombie.