CTMagicUK

For me Cole was a "plays bigger than he is" gamble. Big rebounder for a guard, quite vertically athletic. I think the hope was that that stuff projected someone who could hang defensively against guys bigger than him with some development. Hasn't really worked out like that but I think it was a fine gamble and a solid enough pick in a vacuum.

76ers and Knicks dropped games last night. Magic are now 2 games back of the 4 seed.

The fact that we've held teams to under 100 15 times is insane in itself. The lowest offensive rating in the league is 107.

Good W. Franz and Wendell were awesome but honestly nobody was bad again. Biggest takeaway really is the NBA should have a mercy rule. Longest 4th quarter of my entire life (I dunno why I kept watching).

That game against Philly, second to last game of the season, could be huge.

East from 4-8 is just going to be about who can string a run of wins together. 3 games separate everyone. I'm scared Miami will do the whole "ok, ASB is out of the way, time to take this seriously now" they're 5-1 in their last 6 and the 1 was a close loss to the Celtics. I really hope we can avoid the play in though and snag that 6 seed. (Mostly because the 7th or 8th seed means a world where we could play the Hawks in the play in)

I think who you start at PG is dependent on who you start at PF. If you play WCJ/Goga you can't start Fultz because you can't have 2 non shooters in the lineup but if you go with Okeke/WCJ it makes more sense to start Fultz over AB. Fultz really didn't seem like a good fit with that bench unit against Atlanta.

I wonder how much John Hammonds thinking is still resonant in the front office. He always seemed to be the main driving force behind "long bois" stuff if you think of his track record having drafted Joe Alexander, Larry Sanders, John Henson, Giannis, Thon Maker in Milwaukee and then here we picked Isaac, Bamba and Okeke in 3 successive drafts. Then once we started rebuilding we seemed to go away from that somewhat Cole (pre-rebuild pick technically), Franz, Suggs, Paolo, Houstan, AB all represent not necessarily moving away from "long bois" but an evolution of the idea from "giant humans doing crazy things" to "above average positional size with real skill" (I know Cole doesn't really fit this, I have a lot of thoughts about how he could fit into the philosophy from a more theoretical standpoint that didn't really pan out but CBA to get into it here). Anyway I didn't intend to get into an essay length post on draft philosophy or anything which this is threatening to be, I actually only bring it up because Ulrich Chomoche is a very John Hammond type pick. 6'11 18 year old Cameroonian big who's flashed a lot of potential in limited visibility but who is obviously very raw.

Id like to apologize to Paolo Banchero for my criticisms of him taking too many jumpers. It turns out if he doesn't do that his teammates would just stand around passing it to each other until someone turns it over or gets a shot clock violation. Seriously, it looked like a team of guys who'd never played with each other before. Getting basically blown out by the Trae Young less Hawks is a bad look honestly. That's a play in team WITH it's all star guard. Nobody was really good enough. On to the next one. Hope Jonathan Isaac is ok because at this point it's become apparent that he's a one man bench defense. We put that man out there with Cole, Ingles and Mo Wagner and they regularly blow the other teams bench away. Take him out of it (and admittedly Markelle was added to that lineup which I think made things a bit funky) and the bench was terrible.

Y'know I'm pretty excited to see what Franz looks like tonight as the number 1. Haven't seen that this season at all really, would have preferred it to not be against the Hawks, a team who've had our number so far, on the second night of a back to back though. No Trae though obviously should make things easier.

Hope everyone is ready for another masterclass tonight from our star PF... Mo Wagner lol

The Magic are 2 games back of the 4 seed.

Man I hate when we play with our food against these bad teams. Felt like we had so many opportunities to just stretch that out of their reach and we kept letting them back in it. Credit to them though Cade and Duren were awesome. Paolo wasn't good for the majority of the game and I just thought it wasn't his night after missing those 2 FTs but that play at the end was unbelievable. (He travelled though I think) Cole was good again but he did venture into that "I'm the man everyone get me the ball" territory that I kind of hate. Mo Wagner was great again. We keep winning. Hopefully we've got enough in the tank for Atlanta tonight, would really love to get a W back over them.

I would but only if it wasn't super costly. That contract is pretty big and he's having a down year. Plus he's at best the 4th best player on a sub .500 team, what is that worth? That being said Suggs/Franz/Cam/Paolo/WCJ is a pretty spicy lineup.

Hopefully the Bucks can beat the 76ers tomorrow and the Heat can drop some games on this west coast trip they're on.

Boo the 76ers and Heat winning.

Good news about Jalen then.

I certainly hope so. Hopefully it's not another 10 years from now lol

(Triple post, this is how I got to 10k posts, talking to myself lol) The Thunder have waived Aleksej Pokusevski. I had that guy unreasonably high on my 2020 draft board lol

There's a good 10+ mins on Orlando and Paolo in the latest Dunker Spot podcast. Good stuff.

Appreciated :)

I was about to push back on Paolo a little because he was so not himself that for the first half I don't think he even attempted a layup. But then I remembered the 3 point play he had chalked off for a completely normal basketball play so the point still stands. Franz always gets a bad whistle, should be averaging as many FTs as Paolo really, the way he hunts paint touches.

Great win going to Cleveland on the road. The bench were awesome. Mo Wagner was phenomenal. Cole was great, especially in the second half. Isaac did the usual Isaac things. AB was very good on defense and had some great passing moments. Gary Harris was low key very good too. Had some big moments on defense. Ingles hit big shots. Fun game for the non stars all around honestly. When Scott Foster called that offensive foul on Paolo I thought the fix was in but he called some just as bad ones our way so I'll take it. Paolo shouldn't have played I don't think. He didn't look well. He played like he had no idea where he was and I think having him in the game did us more harm than good honestly. Hope Jalen is ok.

"Role playing no names" like Penny Hardaway, Dennis Scott and Nick Anderson.

Paolo is listed as questionable tonight with an Illness...