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No worries, The Magic have brought big joy to this Christmas! https://x.com/nba/status/1871390875173151031?s=46 This team is family! We as fans have to do a better job! I feel like we a Magic family. Ain’t no fanbase went through what we went through. So no point fighting about two ways or whatever. I have great confidence in the front office and also this team. I be posting these fan gm posting just to engage. I know it can be annoying to some. But i can’t help it, i care about this team so much, always wanting to improve. These injuries could go down in history as the best thing that could have happened to us. The other players can’t be passive, ball watching whatever Paolo and Franz does. Anyway, Merry Christmas to the Magic family

Every time Cole starts at PG a kitten dies. Orlando Magic, please take care of the kittens.

We are somehow 17-9... without our star... and now without our second star. Weltman and Co. have won my trust. I think the following moves have been savvy and unexpected: Drafting Paulo Trading Vooch for WCJ and two 1sts... Then using the first of the two picks to grab Franz Drafting AB, who has crazy two-way upside Drafting TDS, who is a a perfect glue fit Grabbing and extending Mo and Goga Drafting and being patient with JI Drafting and being patient with Jalen Signing Mose to be our coach Do I love everything Weltman has done? Of course not. But he and his crew have demonstrated an ability to identify talent, build a winning culture, and be patient in their development plan. I still believe we are a year or two away from really competing, but I remain curious as to how this group will grow as individuals and as a team. Go Magic!

This team is what the Rob Hennigan teams were supposed to be. Shout out to Paolo

I'm no TMF but I couldn't let the season opener not have a game thread.

moe wagner is the type of player i would never want to let go reminds me of how i liked this high energy players like prime bo outlaw, pietrus, gortat or darrell armstrong

I'm by no means Walter Clayton Jrs biggest fan, I like him, i'd be happy with drafting him, but I'm not sold he's some star or anything. That being said, inspired by your comment I went to barttorvik to look for similar statistical profiles to him, and now granted I used arbitrary cut off points.. (if you're interested it was: Games Played ≥ 15; Assist % ≥ 20; Ast/TO Ratio ≥ 1.5; 2P FG % ≥ 0.5; 3P FG % ≥ 0.37; 3PA/100 Poss ≥ 12; Free Throw % ≥ 0.8) ..but the only drafted player that met those thresholds (that, again, I derived from Walter Clayton Jrs profile) was 2012 Damian Lillard. But, there were also a bunch of undrafted, non prospect, scoring PGs guys like Max Abmas in 2021, Steven Ashworth in 2023 etc. If you lower some of the thresholds slightly to account for an element of randomness, and filter only for draft picks (because otherwise you get a long long list of random names and filtering for draft picks is kind of short hand for filtering out guys who played in weird low conferences or never had NBA athleticism to be considered a prospect) you get names like: Coby White Jimmer Fredette Trae Young Klay Thompson Cameron Payne Isaiah Cannan Shelvin Mack Jared Butler (Just FYI I feel like we should asterix Trae Young, and to a certain extent Lillard and Thompson because they all scored on more volume than Clayton did and I think were all more clearly NBA caliber offensive creators hence why all were high draft picks) It's a weird list that I think helps to identify the difficulty in evaluating a guy like Clayton, because there have been a lot of star NCAA guards that weren't great NBA players... But he was also statistically very impressive and he lead a team to a national championship which adds sort of 'intangible' points.

It's hard for me to see posts like this, when you consider that our fascination with tanking led to about 15 years of futility. And now you want to contaminate our current roster, with lots of young players and two young stars, with the idea that winning isn't important and you can just turn it on and off. It's really hard to think of any worse idea than this.

I got to go to last nights game. It was the best performance I’ve seen by a player live. Though Paolo’s 50 point game was close. I knew when Steph hit that half court shot at half time we were in for it. He is definitely my favorite non Magic player of all time.

If this team trades Paolo for Zion we deserve to get clowned as hard as the Mavs.

0-4 vs Portland and Utah this year is impressive in all the bad ways something can be impressive

A perfect and realistic trade deadline would be adding Cam Johnson and Keon Ellis! Super underrated: Rotation: PG: Suggs, AB, Queen SG: KCP, Ellis, SF: F. Wagner, C. Johnson, C. Houstan PF: Banchero, Isaac, TDS C: Bitadze, WCJ Having Suggs, KCP, AB and Ellis causing havoc on defense would be beautiful to watch

Jalen cost us this game with his untimely turnovers and ill advised 3 point shooting in the 4th. We stopped moving the ball and went to iso basketball and jacking up 3 pointers which is always a recipe for disaster.

Just bought four tickets to take the family to the early Sunday home game against the Nets in two weeks (12/29). Wasn’t cheap but we’re all looking forward to it!

Always glad to see the lakers lose.

KCP’s impact on the game today is the difference

Always nice to win the ugly ones, but that was gross! 9-1 stretch without Paolo is incredible and unexpected. We’re 12-7 and 3rd in the East!! We’ve got 7 more games left until that “bye week” where we’re off from Dec 9 - 18. Most of those games are on the road, but there aren’t any world beaters in there, so if we go 4-3 or 5-2 in that stretch, we’re looking at 17-9 or 16-10 through 26 games and maybe getting Paolo back and a nice home stand through the end of the year starting on Dec 19. Sky’s the limit, Go Magic

Magic last 5 opponents: 86 PTS 90 PTS 89 PTS 94 PTS 88 PTS They are absolutely suffocating teams right now

We definitely never saw a KCP lineup last year.

I'm not understanding your comments at all. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a point guard having the ball in their hands as long as they use it to set up the other players on the team with good opportunities. in fact, that's the whole point. It's way better than giving the ball to Paulo at the top of the key and hoping he can go 1v5 or make some shot with a very high degree of difficulty. Let's make life easier for the players we hope will be our stars.

Depressing. L

Making a move for a point guard has been long overdue, so let’s just kick that can down the road till eternity. Stadium is full, we good.

Guess I’m the only one watching. Lol. Anyway just heard that the NBA is now kissing the Sheik’s butt and naming the In season tournament the Emirate Cup. Proving once again that Made in the USA or even owned by an American company means Nothing to these big organizations. Bunch of money whores, that don’t give a dam about anything else.

No, they're only the reigning champions when healthy, they're not that great. There's a huge difference between always complaining and providing a different point of view from the "if we were healthy we would DESTROY them", or "if we had a good shooting game we would be 2-1". Like we're the only team having injuries, problems or bad shooting nights... seems like the others are always 100%, and we're always unlucky. I told you various time that I respect your faith in the team and the way you're a great fan, but you should avoid those "Give it a rest" and judging other fans just because they're pointing out real issues, or a different point of view. ;)

Believe it or not It tells me everything I need to know about you actually. I don’t even need to meet you in person. Also crazy thought but a fan can be critical of the team and still be a fan. Just because some of us aren’t satisfied with mediocrity doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to voice our frustration. So you’re absolutely wrong when you say I’ll be critical of this team when we win but I digress.

Been posting for years while i drink. While i do feel ashamed a bit, 2012 to 2022 taught me not to accept the state of the team, just because of fandom. While constant negativity can be a real downer on a message board, we have to rally the fanbase to not accept mediocrity. I like the minds on this board, some have left that had more basketball knowledge then Weltman will ever have. We are sort of trained, made to believe that people in charge are competent. Has there ever been a time in history when it's more obvious that this is simply not true? I, we, this forum, fans of the Magic have been wondering when we are going to get a decent point guard for almost 15 years. That's a long time. We deserve better. Just to give you context i am a life long Dolphins fan and Chris Grier continues to make the same mistakes he makes every year. The owner is more about loyalty then winning. No, fandom isn't the end all be all but i would like a Dolphin or Magic title in my lifetime. I'm old.

The only team above us in the East with an easier Strength of Schedule the rest of the way is Boston. The Bucks and Pistons specifically are both in the top half of the league in how difficult their remaining schedule is. If we take care of business we can finish as the 6 seed.

First in the conference, and still trying to improve...

I’ll tell you one thing, the board is a hell of a lot more active when we suck lol

Our core 3 is Paolo, Franz and Jalen. Anyone else on this team is tradeable. Saw a stat earlier today that among qualified players with at least 100 3 point attempts Jonathan Isaac is in dead last in the league in percentage and AB is 4th to last. The KCP signing was a failure. Jett was an awful, wasted pick. The Wendell extension was a terrible decision. We don’t have a single point guard on this roster to make life easier on our offense. We have one of the worst 3 point shooting teams of all time. And we have a GM who refuses to make any moves to address any of our weaknesses. It’s okay though, at least we’ve got plenty of guys smiling and laughing on the bench while getting boat raced by a bad team to cap off a horrible January of basketball. I’m legitimately angry..

Jalen and Cole back, Goga out for at least one more. First time Jalen, Franz and P have played together since October 30… I could cry! Let’s go!

Counterpoint, it wouldn’t be very Weltman like to make any sort of trade at all.

Cole should let the game come to him and not force anything like he is doing

This was absolutely pathetic tonight. I have never seen a more pathetic shooting team in all of my years watching basketball. And it's been that way for years now. Also, not having a legit point guard to run the offense is a major problem. That too has been an issue for quite some time. All this defense being a top priority is fine and all. But if you don't have any kind of offense guess what? You ain't going nowhere. We are so easy to beat right now. All opposing teams have to do is just pack the paint and let us shoot 3's all night long. Then when we shoot 18 percent we hang our heads and stop playing defense. It seemed like they mailed it in tonight. I sure hope to see a better effort versus Boston on Friday night. As for what I think we will do at the trade deadline? Nothing of course. They'll say something like "once we get our injured players back, we'll be fine".

Exactly. Trajan Langdon fixed the Pistons shooting problem as soon as he took over, and for cheap, too. This dude been here since 2017 and we been the worst shooting team since then. Pathetic. Langdon provided Cade Cunningham with the spacing he needed to take his game to the next level and they been one of the hottest teams in the league. Paolo was averaging damn near 30 ppg with the worst spacing in the league. He has to work for every shot, and it's been like that since he's been here. The man damn near begged for a table setter all off-season, only for Weltman to force Suggs to play out of position.

Yeah, I'm in the group that strongly believe that we need to make moves and not falling in love with the internal development thing, but at the same time Zion doesn't make sense at all. For his position/role and style of play, will not solve the 3p% issue at all, and that's without even entering the number of games he misses and the bad character issues. With Franz and Paolo we're obviously set at 3/4, we have a lot of C options, and even more guards. For me is pretty evident, has always been, that we need a PG, smart, good assistmen, above average from 3, not needing always the ball in his hands... basically the next Jrue (even if maybe there's only one Jrue), would be perfect. Boston had a similar SF/PF situation with a lot of talent, but they decided that internal growth wasn't enough, and made multiple moves to finally win the ring. Holiday was the most needed and important one, but White and Porz were acquired through trades too.

That’s way too much. Kills our backcourt depth. I don’t know if there’s a player in the league id be willing to give up TDS, AB and 3 firsts for

Yeah, I agree. We can hide behind the injuries, and they suck and they’re playing a role in our floor, but none of the issues that are getting exposed are new issues for us. We’ve been asking for shooting and playmaking help for years and it still hasn’t happened. We have several vets that we continue to double down on that are constant disappointments. If our goal is championship, we need to build the team out better around our big 3. It’s kind of a clunky mess and it speaks volumes to me that our most impactful injury so far when it comes to our play and wins and losses has been Moe Wagner

I get the general thought but I'm going to push back on this a little mostly because our lack of scoring talent casts Mo Wagner as our 4th best scorer and thus allows you to include White and Anunoby above when both of those guys are tremendously more impactful on winning than Mo Wagner (not a shot at Mo I love him but we're talking scoring bench big versus versatile 2 way player) Which to me is a solid argument that the roster isn't quite balanced correctly and making a trade to add a piece that would push Mo Wagner down the pecking order in that regard makes a lot of sense.

I'm not going to lie I've seen so little from Jett Howard that if he'd bring back positive value in a trade I'd move him. Like if Jett + the Denver pick gets you a really solid contributor who can shoot I'd do that without a second thought.

I upvoted you true. I agree, he has always been me first on the court. He has talent, no doubt and his camaraderie with his teammates is commendable. But his play on the court is very uneven, and usually notably selfish.

Win or lose, just so proud of this team. We got a real squad. Honestly a loss would feel ok, these guys have earned a break to get healthy!

This organisation selected and developed Franz Wagner. Scouts said he might be a 3/4 tweener and as a rookie we played him at PG and SG at times (partly due to injuries) to develop his ball handling. The idea that we lucked into him when literally nobody was saying he was this good is wild. We also brought in his brother for free off the scrap heap in a move that is one of the more underrated moves they've made because it likely helped Franz settle to have his brother around and Mo Wagner became one of our important bench pieces at the exact same time. I think Mo Wagner was actually a culture setting move too. A guy who was almost out of the league who scrapped and clawed his way into being a legitimate NBA player. Everyone crying we can't trade WCJ because we have Goga but they ignore that Indiana literally gave up on Goga and this organisation brought him in and developed him so much so that he literally said this summer he wanted to stay because this organisation saved his career. Nobody wants to give any credit to the decision makers for that? A few years ago Rob Hennigan traded Oladipo and Sabonis for the corpse of Serge Ibaka, now we've got an actually good front office (not perfect by any stretch, nobody is) and people still want to complain about it when they've built the best team we've had in a long time. The people who want to trade WCJ, Jett and Cole for some random scoring guard who plays no defense are the same people who'd have traded Vuc for a packet of chips before he had his all star years and became valuable enough to net us the pick that became Franz. Fans aren't patient. But this front office is and usually it's proven to be worthwhile for them to be patient. Tyus Jones being the big point of contention for people is absolutely mind blowing. He's the starting PG on a team with a worse record than us who we just beat without our two best players.

Amazing how much fun we are to watch when everyone gets to touch the ball on offense. Really seems to energize our players.

I don't agree at all. It seems to me that as at today, NY has a better team than the Magic. They are contenders, we are not. Contrary to the “optimistic” analysis, it seems to me that we are not at that level yet. There is a subtle difference between optimistic and blind. However, I expected us to approach today's game with a different attitude, because it was a sort of final.So far, the Knicks came out prepared to play a final today, we did not.

That was one of the worst games of basketball I've ever seen. We were terrible on offense and Charlotte were somehow worse. A win is a win though. Tough night for Tristan. They dared him to beat them and when he missed a few in a row he got hesitant and then they could sag all the way off him. Similar thing happened with Black. And they were selective with it too, they ran KCP and Jett off the line all night. It bit them a little bit because Jonathan Isaac just kept shooting them and eventually got a couple to go. Smart defense from the Hornets though really, they seem well coached on that end, if they weren't so incredibly loose with the ball they'd have likely won that game but they had like 500 turnovers. Against these not great teams our defense is often enough but still you'd like to not be totally inept on offense.

Franz Wagner has *****ing arrived!!! What a dub!

Boston last year..

Think the biggest issue in the 2nd unit is we didn’t replace Fultz or Ingles with a playmaker. We had so few playmakers to begin with and we don’t have any creators off the bench. We also still have a bunch of vets who can’t hit wide open shots. I’m trying not to be too reactionary, but we might want to consider an early season trade to keep our heads above water. I also think the team needs to get home before we can judge them too harshly, this has been the road trip from hell. Also, I know it’s frustrating with constantly injured players, I’m guilty of being hard on them as much as anyone, but I’m heartbroken for WCJ. Seeing him in tears on the bench because his body just isn’t cooperating with his mind really reminded me of the human element. It was also really cool to see Suggs comforting him. Even if we’re in a slump and the early season has been rough, I’m glad I root for a team filled with genuinely good dudes.

Tristan needs to be in the rotation now properly!!