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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.

I might get eye rolls for this, but watching TJ McConnell impact the finals has me thinking we should address our PG issue by bringing back *drum roll…. Markelle Fultz on the minimum. He was mentored by TJ. We could play him in a lineup where we don’t need him to be a threat to shoot; and he could be in a 10-12 mpg bench role with almost no pressure. If he’s struggling, we pull him. Just thinking of cheap alternatives. It’d be fun to bring him back in a better position to succeed

I'm sure the Magic would love to add a Penny Hardaway or a Magic Johnson but that player is not out there.

I missed the team early this season And when p5 was out were Franz was operating, That was FUN! and we just got broken. been a fan for 30 years now. This is not new, this is what magic basketball is about.

Two teams went to 7 games last season. One team looked at what happened, identified it's biggest weakness (coaching in the Cavs case) and then made changes. The other team looked at its biggest weakness (shooting, offense generally) and said "well we just gave 20mil to a 5th option roleplayer from a championship team who can shoot so that ought to do it." I didn't watch the whole game, about half way through the 3rd it was apparent that whenever we scraped and clawed the lead down a couple points the Cavs had immediate and easy answers. More than anything I'm just super bored with the same players, the same problems, the same story every time we run into a real contender.

Where is TMF at? Lol. The thing is, at this point who would be willing to take him?

Welcome to the dark side lol.

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

They've changed Franz injury designation from the injury to "Return to competition reconditioning" so he's probably a week or two away. I am so ready to have Paolo and Franz back man.

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.

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.

I very much dislike the personality of pretty much this entire Knicks team. Bunch of guys that need their asses kicked. I look forward to playing them when we’re healthy

"GM I don't like makes good move = luck GM I don't like makes bad move = terrible GM and not at all related to luck."

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.

Two torn oblique injuries has nothing to do with bad luck or coincidence. It has more likely than not, something to do with their training routines, workouts or whatever. They have to evaluate what is going on. But i do say this. It’s rare that both of your star players have the same unusual injury. That’s kinda bad luck.

And, call me crazy, I like it when basketball players play basketball.

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.

I guess I'm not in the half then because I certainly wouldn't have benched one of the best defensive players in the NBA for Tyus Jones.

What an unbelievable God damn win. Franz Wagner is a god damn super star. League better look out because we've got two of em.

I don’t exactly know what happened, but I reached out to Dan Savage and he had it fixed. We are back in the game! Let’s go!

I am here at Kia Center!! Welcome back TBN!!

I see no relation between playing for your national team and losing focus on your individual development. Franz was never a Go-to profile on any team he played for and probably never will be. But that has nothing to do with the German national team, or spending time away from the USA. There are even many examples of players who come back much improved after competing internationally. Almost all of the MVP candidates in recent years are foreigners and have participated every year or almost every year in international tournaments. Shay, Luka, Jokic, Giannis. I don't know how you can realize so clearly who has the natural talent to be Go-To and who can develop it and where geographically speaking. In my opinion it's just a matter of the type of player you are and the type of on-field personality you have. That can change a little bit, but it has nothing to do with what zip code you're in, but a lot of other things that probably no one can list that easily.

That’s ok and I don’t agree with yours but that’s the beauty of being in a forum.

Ok, I’m going to try to bring in a bit of optimism on the Paolo news and I think I have an idea of when he could be back based off the schedule. First, while I’m sure the injury is painful AF and it’s not ideal, at least it’s not worse, and at least it’s not a lower body injury. It’s also not something that should linger once he gets back, and Paolo does have a career so far where he’s been incredibly durable. I also don’t worry about a slow ramp up, this isn’t Markelle Fultz or JI or Gary or Wendell who are hurt all the time, I’m confident with Paolo’s work ethic and his youth that he’ll be back within the time frame laid out. Looking at the schedule we have a large break between a game on December 8th, which is roughly 5 weeks out, and a game on December 19th. I imagine this is the targeted return date, about 6.5 weeks out from injury diagnosis. If this is the case, Paolo will miss 21 games. Of those 21 games, 8 of them are at home and 7 are against teams that weren’t playoff teams last year. This is a BRUTAL schedule to start the season, and would’ve been with or without Paolo. If we can go something like 9-12 in the games Paolo misses or better and be at 12-14 or so when he’s back, we’ll be ready to make a run to make up some seeding over the last 2/3 of the season. Again, not ideal, but also could have been significantly worse. While P5 is out, I’m excited to see what Alpha Franz looks like, and I’m nervous about Jalen trying to do too much. I’d like to see JI with the starters in Paolo’s place and the bench rotation slide Moe to the 4 with Goga at the 5. Something like Suggs/KCP/Franz/JI/Dell with a bench rotation of AB/Jett-Cole/GH/Moe/Goga. We did a good job building depth and that’s still a solid rotation, especially when positive regression for the shooting comes along for pretty much everyone not named Jalen to start the year. It’ll be an interesting next month or so to see what these kids, and Coach Mose are made of. Go Magic!

When: TONIGHT! 7.30pm ET. (Or whatever time it will be for you approximately 7 hours and 30 minutes after this was posted.) Where: Kaseya Center, Miami, Florida. Expected Starting Magic Lineup: Jalen Suggs Kentavious Caldwell-Pope Franz Wagner Paolo Banchero Wendell Carter Jr. Expected Starting Heat Lineup (my guess): Terry Rozier Tyler Herro Jimmy Butler Nikola Jovic Bam Adebayo Injury Report: Josh Richardson is the only player listed as OUT currently for either team. The season is finally here.

Exactly. I understand the fair expectation for Franz having a better 3p%, but it's utopic to believe that everyone will have better % in the same season. A couple examples, Suggs had a great 40%, will maintain it? KCP had great % in teams that were contender with MVP caliber players with him. Will be the same with us and our usual spacing issues? Finally, old grandpa Ingles had the best 3p% in the team and is gone. Some will improve, others will regress, that's normal in an NBA season, but until now we're far away from being a top shooting team.