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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

Shout out to Andy Larsson of the Salt Lake Tribune and Kevin Pelton ESPN's resident stat guy who stopped Paolo being unanimous Rookie of the Year by voting Walker Kessler. Some takes are wrong immediately, some take a few years before it becomes apparent they were wrong. And then there are takes that were both wrong at the time and continue to look increasingly more wrong the more that time goes on.

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.

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’m not sure we didn’t offer PG that deal, there was probably a reason he had us set up 3rd in the meeting order and we bounced quickly. There is an argument to be made that Philly’s window is a bit more open than ours the next year or two. I think we also forget just how hard it is to get the perfect pieces for a shot at it all. A lot has to come together to even get one title: - Took Boston 7 years to get it right for Tatum and they had stints with Hayward and Kyrie that failed miserably. -Took Denver 8 years with Jokic. -Golden State needed 6 years to build around Curry.

Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner have scored 20+ points in nine straight games. That's the longest streak by a Magic duo in franchise history

https://twitter.com/cb1115/status/1907195417369948645 Zach Lowe going in on Mosley and the Magic.

Wasn't going to post about that game at all because I'm kind of sick of dwelling in the negativity but you know what. ***** Paolo Banchero. Dudes been ass most of the year. Our single best stretch of the season was when he was injured and Franz carried us. Now he's sulking in press conferences and his mum is tweeting about the coaching. Is the coaching great? Right now not particularly. But MFer was happy as hell with the same coaching when he was getting All Star nominations and winning ROTY and we've had one, admittedly cursed, down year and this dude and his family are crying? How's about grow the hell up and take some accountability? Be better on defense. Don't be one of the least efficient scorers in the game. And miss me with literally any excuse you've got for Paolo. Franz Wagner is in the exact same position, with the same work load and he plays better defense and he's more efficient and he impacts the game at a higher level. He even had the same exact injury and he recovered quicker. It's quickly become apparent that all the vibes weren't legit. It's easy to pull for each other when you're out performing expectations and winning but real friends, real good teammates, they pull together when times are hard. This team looks to have given the hell up. This feels closer to the end of something than the start of something. EDIT: probably taking a break from posting now I can't be bothered with talking about this team anymore.

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...

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!

Welcome to the dark side lol.

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

It will obviously be great to have him back. I just hope we keep up the team play that we've seen (at times, anyway) while the stars have been out. I don't want to go back to having everyone else either: A. Throw the ball to Paulo and then stand around watching. B. Decide it's their turn to shine, go one vs 2-3 and put up a forced shot. These behaviors were particularly prevalent towards the end of close games. I hope we'll continue to improve our teamwork going forward, even as the stars return.

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.

This didn’t age well.

"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."

We need a third scorer. Suggs is too inconsistent to fill that role, especially if the 3 ball isn't falling. He become a bull in a China shop when his shot isn't falling.

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.

Sometimes teams get all the bounces. We just need to make sure we don’t lose by 30 at this point

Actually we only have that week off if we don't clinch a spot in the Cup's Quarter Finals. And we are in a good position to do it!

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.

That's cool. But your anecdotal story of one person, yourself a non-pro player, isn't going to convince me that a guy who's been in the NBA for 7 seasons and has never been a good defender will suddenly become one. Chauncey Billlups, whatever you think of him as a coach or a man, was a part of some of the best defenses of all time. I find it hard to believe he doesn't expect his players to play good defense.

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.

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.

Stopped watching at the half. Being down your best player and 2 of your 4 bigs against a big physical team like Cleveland was always going to be an incredibly tall order. Like I say I only watched the first half but here are the thoughts I did have: How is Ty Jerome allowed to assault our players for the basketball multiple times but Jalen Suggs brushes Donovan Mitchell and it's a foul? Would like to see some more aggressive attacking from Anthony Black, his handle has improved and he had that 1 iso on I think Lavert where he got to the hoop and scored. More of that. TDS is definitely ready to play offense in the league right now. Jumper is fast and clean, makes smart cuts, passes out of the short roll. On defense though I saw him get bodied by Jerome, a PG, which is probably why Mose doesn't trust him yet. Really haven't seen anything from Jett yet. Cole has somehow regressed. He was always frustrating but he usually was good for a couple of buckets. Now he's doing very little right and seems to be losing the trust of the coaches. Franz was disappointing. Next season he'll be making max money. If you're getting paid the big money the standard is different. Jalen can be frustrating but I'd take frustrating and aggressive over passive and sharing the ball when we don't have Paolo to shoulder the scoring.

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

Pre season or not Paolo is going to go as far as he wants to.. this kid has all time great written all over him.... absolute juggernaut already and he is only going to improve and improve.... SUPERSTAR!!!!

From my standpoint we don’t have a real point guard, so I’ll take anything we can get

We improved? How? KCP? I mean we basically just retained what we already had. How did we improve?