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He didn’t go to Kentucky

That's the shot KD had him working on in those videos over the summer.

Easy solution. All the teams that don't make the playoffs get the same lottery odds. Problem solved. Also if you win the lottery one year, you get the 1st pick after all the non playoff teams the next year.

Haliburton in the 2 games before this combined was 32 assists and 0 turnovers. Haliburton against the Magic 3 assists, 4 turnovers. Magic defense is legit. Jalen Suggs should be all defense if he keeps this up.

Haha …big week coming up for the Magic …2 tournament games sandwiched around a big game with the defending champion Nuggets on Wednesday …which by the way I have prime seats for

All their guys are being shut down …I’m starting to wonder what the NBA record is for margin of victory

Harris has been big tonight.

Isaac is clutch!

JI is the star of this game

Took us until December 7th to win our 6th game last season. We have 9 games before we reach December 7th this season. I'm finding I'm super guilty of letting my heightened expectations get me down on this team (you'll note I post an essay when we lose and not quite so much when we win) so I like to keep checking this to remind myself how far we've come. My expectations are for us to be a good team and so when we fall short of that it's frustrating but the improvement is obvious. Our defense is so vastly improved even missing Wendell. The challenge for Weltman and Parker now is to add legitimate shooting threats without taking away from the swarming defense Mosely has built.

Here we go again trying to pry defeat from the jaws of victory

Some interesting (small sample size) lineup stuff. Markelle has only played greater than 10 minutes with 2 lineups. The legit starters (Fultz-Suggs-Franz-Paolo-WCJ) and the non Wendell starters (same group replace WCJ with Goga). The legit starters group are +10.4 net rating in 78 mins. The non Wendell starters are -36.2 net rating in 12 minutes. Suggests that there's a chance with the additional spacing Wendell offers (not loads but certainly more than Goga) Fultz and Paolo could survive together. Obviously we'll have to monitor the numbers as the sample size grows but interesting counter argument to my "Fultz is the odd one out" post I made a couple days ago. Also it's even smaller sample size stuff but we have a positive net rating in 94% of minutes AB and Joe Ingles share the floor together so far. Including their most played lineup together which is Black-Suggs-Ingles-Paolo-Goga, which has played 14 mins together and has a 42 net rating.

Crazy how? Like crazy talented? Nikola Topic is a probable top 10 pick (ESPN have him at 10), 6'7, 18 year old Serbian PG who's a walking paint touch in the Adriatic league against grown men. Alex Sarr is a French big playing in Australia who'll probably be a top 5 pick (ESPN have him at 2) He did this against G League Ignite in an exhibition: https://youtu.be/_SdEmvgY9is?si=aNk2YyFyloFOPVR0 Then there's a bunch of other euro guys who may or may not be lottery picks depending on how they play this year: Izan Almansa a Spanish big with G League Ignite, Aday Mara a Spanish C at UCLA, Zaccharie Risacher a French wing playing in France, Tidjane Salaun a French PF playing in France, Baba Miller who I already mentioned is at FSU is Spanish. (Number 9, 12, 5, 18 and 19 in ESPN's current rankings respectively). This draft actually has quite a lot of international guys who could be first round. There are probably 3 or 4 more guys I didn't mention who could be first round picks depending on how they play.

This will be Paolo. All reports indicate that he is fiercely competitive, even if he comes off as rather unenthusiastic in interviews. It gives me (not to double up on the example above) Tim Duncan vibes. The question will be if the team follows him in his "lead by example" style when he finally hits that next step of having the full trust of his teammates to take over the game and not blow it (like Atlanta).

Disagree with you here, Shine. Cole shot A LOT less tonight (0-3) because he saw other guys were hot and adjusted accordingly. I think Cole has grown leaps and bounds in the last 2 years in terms of his decision making / maturity and has fully embraced his 6th man role.

The young fellas showed out tonight against a legit title contender: Paulo - 20 years old - 24/12/5 Franz - 22 years old - 24/6/3 Jalen - 22 years old - 20/2/2 Let those ages sink in, Magic fans. Meanwhile, the poise, ball handling and defensive abilities of our 19 year old rookie are outstanding.

That’s really bah-ah-ah-ad! Don’t mind me, I’m just trying to get your goat!

Sounds a bit sheepish

To be fair Paolo won us the game in Utah with his go ahead layup. He is also distributing the ball much better this year as he is leading the team in assists. He is far from a selfish player. Franz is the guy in my opinion that needs to step up. He is shooting under 40% from the field and has the same percentage as Paolo from three. He also is leading the team in shot attempts. Paolo hasn't attempted more than 18 shots in a game so far. I love both but want to be fair as neither have had a great start to the year.

A lot of people who watch basketball don't even understand what they're watching. That's the truth. So they have terrible nonsensical takes or they just repeat the takes that commentators and analysts give and the NBA has basically the worst mainstream media of any sport when it comes to actual analysis of the game. And some people don't even watch the games. They just watch the highlights and the box score and think they're qualified to understand what actually happened.

Yes I’d still be upset if Paolo hit that 3. We should have never been in that position to begin with. Paolo repeatedly killed our momentum in the 4th will all his turnovers, missed shots, and offensive fouls. Why did the coach insist on running the offense through him in crunch time when he was clearly struggling is beyond me. Fultz and especially JI sat out entirely too long in the 4th. Only reason we changed the momentum of the game and took a 10 point lead was because JI was wreaking havoc on defense and attacking the basket on offense which lead to him getting fouled repeatedly and actually making most of his free throws. Now is Paolo the only person to blame here? Definitely not because we missed way too many free throws as a team and were just plain careless handling the basketball with many unforced turnovers. However when it mattered the most Paolo cost us this game with his head scratching decision making along with Mosleys untimely rotations.

Hint to Moseley …there’s some guy named Issac sitting on your bench if you need defense

Not if he doesn't play he's not. And this team really needs more than just 1 shooter.

As to be expected, Scott Foster might as well be reffing in a Mavs jersey

I’ve seen loads of Ingles bashing here but right now he’s keeping us from getting blown out