hootie249

Honestly i do not get this. We are locked in, as always. 15 guaranteed contracts on a team where we will be stretching to win 25 games? and up against the cap? Where is the flexibility to absorb someone. I'll change my mind in the Spring if they get a prospect or draft picks. What i see is picking up a year or two of bad contracts at best. Nobody want's Moore, this is a knee jerk reaction to McW who will probably get released at some point. I would rather have rode 10 day contracts till the problem resolved itself. SMDH. Management sucks. No imagination.

Yeah i like where your head is at. Good idea in theory, and something i'm sure the magic will do in the future. However we have a roster crunch. I'm sure nearing the deadline things will happen. They are going into the season to see what we have already. Eventually we will have to make some room on the roster and then we can take another look at some of these guys. We should have been acquiring low key players the last 4 years, but insisted on playing super low ceiling vets. All in the name of a couple playoff appearances. Well that's over now but since we have so many guys gonna have to wait a bit.

If you could trade for Simmons being the Magic you do it 6 times from Sunday. You give up Isaac in a heartbeat. Philly would never do it but since you brought it up. Philly is in a salary crunch the next few years but they do want to compete. Lets say the base of the deal is Ross and Isaac. Philly replaces the defensive prowess of Simmons with Isaac and gets another big guard with Ross who can shoot the three. Philly surrounds Embiid...their true star with a million shooters like Green,Curry,Ross and helps a size issue they have behind Tobias,Embiid and Dieng. They have a plethora of guards and will only struggle with playmakers, ballhandlers. However, when they have vets handling the ball half the time like Green,Embiid,Curry and youngsters like Shake and Maxey they can deal with it. There is no downside for us. Just like Houston and OKC we have decided to suck for at least two years. Trading Isaac has almost no impact because we have no chance to be a playoff team the next two years. That's half of Isaac's contract. The upside for us is a star, a ticket draw and a player who has a good chance to change our future. Give them our 2022 pick which probably will be high lottery with Simmons and hope Morey and his Hubris will think we will suck so that the pick will be worse. Absolute worse case scenario, Simmons is a good trade Chip when Suggs,Fultz, Chuma, whoever plays great and has to be paid 3 years from now. Edit; It will not happen but the only thing that would bother me is the other picks. If we traded for Simmons i would not care about next years pick, i know everyone here would considering that would be the best one probably but picks are like the Box or Boat conundrum. Get Simmons and we have Suggs and Simmons and all of our other guys for 3 years. We don't know what next years pick could be. The crutch would be what else we gave up. Still, it's a fantasy. It would be something like our next years pick top 4 protected(standard shown last few years..see the Wolves/Rockets/OKC trades and the meat of the deal). Then another pick from us and one of the Bulls or Nuggets pick. Morey would want a few pick swaps and that is where the deal could break down. All this is fantasy because Morey would be taking a big chance on Isaacs injury history. If it wasn't for that we would be front runners for Simmons.

Cam is there if the Magic want him, and i do think he has potential. The fact that we keep punting 2nd round picks makes me doubt anything happens. First of all, let me state my obvious disappointment with our draft process and the numbers game. Atlanta made the conference finals and have a ton of rotation ready players and still drafted 3 players in the draft. AND ALL 3 LOOKED GOOD! Doesn't that piss you off a little? And they also have less of a roster crunch since they made trades after the draft, obviously to make room for all the good players they have. Second, they have to pay Trea,Hunter,Huerter and Cam soon, starting with Trea of course. They do actually have a payroll crunch and we have several trade exceptions. We fit as nearly a perfect trade partner for Cam. I would mention being a division rival stopping them trading them to us but i'm positive they couldn't care less, we just have to make a move. He is worth taking a chance on. Atlanta will 90% trade Cam if Hunter looks good to go this preseason. Next player to go will be possibly Huerter before or during the season, depending on how he comes back from injury. I would try to trade them Ross for Huerter and Cam but i'm guessing at the least they are trying to trade cam without getting back salary and taking whatever draft capitol they can get back. A Ross trade would only come into play if Huerter looks bad or hurt during the offseason. So jealous of the Jalen Johnson draft by the Hawks. They get 4 super cheap rookie years from him which might let them avoid the salary cap crush later on. If he looks good this year they can trade Galinari and have pretty good negotiations with Hunter and Okongwu. If he develops into a star i think this division is gonna be a problem. I mean lets face things. The Hawks and Heat rule the division right now and the Hawks sure look like a long term problem. Hornets and Wizards made some cool move as well, if only to give themselves flexibility. And one of them should make the playoffs too!

Must have been something in the interviews, he was a top 10 talent before he quit on Duke.

Remember none of us are perfect. We are not gm's, we can't predict the future. I did not want Maxey last year, but hey the kid looks good. I wanted Vassell but he was picked before our pick. Same with Chuma, i was hoping for Clarke, and he isn't so great. We can go on and on and on with the shoulda coulda woulda takes. I was so happy when Suggs fell because i do not trust our management! For once we got lucky. Going forward what will define Weltham is if they can make clear changes if something isn't working out. To have the balls to look everywhere for talent and not just blindly sink or swim with the guys they picked. So far it seems they do that. As always i hope they are growing and learning from their mistakes. Honestly right now if we wanted a high ceiling, low floor guy we should have taken Sengun. And i doubt he does anything for a few years. If we wanted a super high floor guy who fits into our frontcourt with Isaac we should have taken Trey Murphy or Kispert. Could use the duel argument with Bouknight and Moody, same scenario. Our front office guys value defense and size and that's all you need to know why they chose Franz. He has to potential to be a two way player where the other guys are just one dimensional. They did choose the higher upside guy based on what we know they value. They still don't value shooting, hopefully that changes with the next wave of free agents we pick up.

Been here since 93. Guys, check out San Antonio's summer league game, they scored a ton of points,shot well and won their game. Go look at the starters, none of them are even going to make the NBA team. So what does that mean? They have better back-ups? They scout practice players better? They all shot 50% and they should switch that team with the real Spurs? The answer is no, the games are meaningless and a way to get some confidence and evaluate some fringe talent along side rookies. A few bad or good shooting games do not change a guys future. That said i do agree with people who have concerns with the coaching. I am going to try to hold my tongue about the players, seeing as we have 3 months till real baskeball.

Oh OKC is definitely going to try to be the worst. The moves they made are baffling. Especially buying out Kemba. Getting another high pick has to be their only goal. Look we just have to get behind the small victories. The East is loaded this year. For me the excitement is in forming a real team, who compliment each other.

I have to agree that the way we handled our players has been terrible at times. With Mario and to a lesser extant, Gordon it has much to do with their mentality. You could see them become mentally checked out. I think a few of our players might have played differently on other teams, but in the end if a player doesn't have the talent or willpower they still wind up the same. Elfrid Payton is a perfect example. Let's face it it's pretty simple, most of our picks are just plain bad Basketball players. Most of our success has been with the guys we traded for or signed in free agency. Suggs,Chuma,Isaac and Wagner are going to change this narrative, i hope. Edit. I had to add a paragraph about Oladipo. Looking back on that draft Dipo was the correct pick, and he is the most talented guy we drafted and the highest pick we had during our rebuild, so far. We did monumentally screw up that situation. We absolutley needed to have a decent veteran point guard from his first year. Let's just imagine we had a middle of the road PG from that era. Collison,Rubio,Jack,Teague,Lawson,Hill whoever. Someone we could have overpayed a little to come to the Magic during the rebuild. If we had a real point guard instead of Elfrid and had groomed Oladipo from the start to be an attacking shooting guard, things would be very different. He would have been an All-Star with the Magic. Now imagine he never get's hurt, but hey that's just wishful thinking.

https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/nba-power-rankings-no-1-nets-get-richer-lakers-cling-to-top-five-spot-blazers-sink-after-free-agency-moves/ Magic are dead last on this very early power ranking. It's gonna be a long year so number one on my wish list is a healthy season. I will definitely watch the games, and enjoy seeing the youngsters. I just hope for some good health so we can finally see how Futlz,Bamba,Isaac and crew can play.

Yeah what a rebuild. When Wall's contract is up i'm betting they will ready to compete again. They own their own pick this year too. Funny i thought they gave up so much to get Westbrook.

Sengun looked awesome.

Yeah i watched half last night and the rest this morning. Suggs is definitely the real deal. Like you guys i'm a little disappointed with Cole, he just needs to focus and relax, he's too sloppy and amped up. Wagner did have the size, not much else but hey it's one game. He did seem quick enough to close out on the 3 point line. Moody and Kuminga looked exactly how i imagined. Kuminga's shot is raw but he did have a better feel for the game then i thought. Moody is gonna show out sooner of the two. He just has a natural shot, seemed poised. Part of me still wishes we took Moody. I would definitely not have picked Kuminga over Suggs, he might be awesome, but it's gonna take some time. We needed a guy like Suggs.

Challenging Cole to be better defensively is one thing. Cole should be our leading scorer this season, barring a big breakout by someone else. The coach should scheme for him to score points and use others to limit his defensive liabilities. I don't like that quote, when he fails at something he shouldn't be burdened with i hope the coach doesn't call him out. A good team, a good coach knows what his team should be and how best to use them. If i hear dumb coach speak after a game when a big guard roasts Cole i'm going to be disappointed. That would be a mistake. Get this kid some confidence and help him be a scorer. We need one, figure out the rest later.

It's ok, we are not done but finally moving in the right direction. Our drafting in the last 20 years is a big reason for our problems. Now we are turning it around, and next years draft could be the one we look at as the biggest piece. First get quality players, not busts. Then one turns into a star, finally fill in the gaps or bring in another star through free agency. It's all on the table now that we have actually embraced what we were. Just have to resist overpaying mediocre players while figuring it out. Keep the best, get rid of the rest.