CTMagicUK

Jalen Suggs is currently on the injury report as day to day.

Seeing a lot of people (brain dead morons) with "Paolo exposed"/"just Julius Randle"/"fake all star" takes on social media and from some terrible talking heads in podcasts and stuff. Need a win and huge games from him in games 3 and 4 because I cant bare a whole summer of these takes.

Thread for all discussions on the playoffs and the play-ins across the league now the regular season is over. What are people's predictions? The West looks an absolute bloodbath. I'm thinking a Nuggets/Clippers WCF and a Nuggets/Celtics finals. Struggling to pick the other East finalist, Philly maybe?

I'd hope Paolo and Franz can be part of the solution too. Otherwise chances are they can't be successful together long term without a high level shooter at the 5 which is a difficult archetype to find given the defensive responsibility of the position.

D'Angelo Russell hit 7 3s in game 2. I'm not even a fan of his really. But at this point we're so unbelievably desperate for some shot making I'll be thoroughly campaigning for us to go after him or anyone like him. Trae Young, Dejounte Murray, the corpse of Klay Thompson, if you can shoot the ball at a high level we should be trying to trade for or sign you this off-season.

Honestly, just start Anthony Black. Like what's the worst that can happen? If he scores 2 points on 1/7 shooting he'd be having a better series than half of our roster and he'd play a damn sight better defense than half the roster too.

Jamal Murray is that dude.

Can't even win a coin flip at the minute.

Disclaimer: this is not a reflection of where we are as a team or me giving up on the season or anything like that I just like talking about draft prospects. NCAA season has started so thought we could start to use this. Because I expected us to be better this year I haven't gotten a jump on draft prospects as early as I usually would. Learning as I go but trying not to focus in on the top guys. Last few years we've been looking at top draft guys. Top 5, top 10 etc. Have a feeling we'll be more in that 14-20 range this coming year (or maybe we even trade the pick? Who knows?) Looking in that range I'm really looking at guys who fit. For me guys that fit this team (i.e. fit with Paolo and Franz) are: big guard or wing shooters, stretch bigs or mobile rim protecting bigs. Jakobe Walter, freshman from Baylor, caught my eye yesterday: https://youtu.be/3VNZPAdy3ZU?si=nTaOpYONElbvyqP9 Clearly not a shot creator but he looks to have incredible touch and can shoot the 3 off of movement. Givony has him at #16 at ESPN early on. Another guy I like (don't have any highlights from this year yet) is Trevon Brazile, stood out to me at times watching AB film last season at Arkansas but only played a handful of games due to injury. 6'10, super athlete, mobile on defense and his 3 point jumper looks good. (He's currently at #25 on ESPN) But there are loads of other guys I'm interested in seeing, some guys we shouldn't be in a position to draft and some we might be, playing in College, overseas and for G League Ignite.

Can't shoot. Dumb turnovers. Getting out rebounded. Paolo's defense is bad. That's basically the story of the first two games. There was actually a group of people on this board who did a victory lap when we didn't make a trade at the deadline and kept Markelle Fultz. How's that working out for us? Maybe we make it a series at home but I've already got one eye on the off season. This is a big one. Biggest in some time.

I believe game 1 was literally the worst half court offensive performance the Magic have had all season. Surely we'll get some regression to the mean tonight? Just average shooting from Harris, Suggs, Cole etc and we give ourselves a chance.

Thanks TMF! Let's say this is the Game 2 thread, I'd really like us to get separate threads for each game so I'll make make shift ones for games 3+ if needs be. They won't have all the pics and stuff though unfortunately.

If none of the guards are going to hit shots honestly I'd be interested in seeing Anthony Black get minutes. I doubt we'd do it but he literally cannot be worse as a shooter than what we got game 1.

It was a fine pass to Jalen Suggs, why JI got involved I don't know. .

Y'all wanting Gary Harris out are insane. For who? There are two sides of the ball and nobody on that bench can guard Donovan Mitchell.

Gary Harris make a jumper challenge.

When Jalen plays with this fire is when he gets cooking. We're going to need him in this series.

We're playing like ass offensively though.

Honestly whatever happens now this season has been a success. I view this series as a chance to really expose every flaw we have for the off-season.

This defense isn't going to cut it.

This teams playing terribly since the Fultz flagrant. Game is at risk of getting away from us.

That's a flagrant foul? Soft.

I was late getting home but I'm caught up now. I like the way we're playing. They're going to make shots that's fine just stay connected and try and make a run.

I don't know, I think Harris is just a low volume guy, you need guys like that. If he had an expanded offensive role his defense would likely drop off. Plus he's only really a spot up shooter (doesn't shoot off movement or off the dribble) and there aren't many reliable ways to run sets to get those guys better looks because it's dependent on teams helping off of them. He definitely could be an X factor in this series though, we'll need to play good, disciplined guard defense and hit shots and that's his game.

The Magic are 35-19 with Gary and 12-16 without him. Now, much like last season and Markelle with point guard play I think there's an element of "is it really Gary or is it just having a 2 way guard who can space the floor?" To be considered but nevertheless that's a compelling stat when we're talking about bringing Gary back.