Bebop Meat Mop

First game I've watched. Noticed that Hampton got barely any PT, and seemed pretty aimless and disengaged when he was in. Has this been the case all year?

Agreed. Problem with Simmons is much more than bad FT shooting; he has a mental block, the yips, the heebie-jeebies, whatever you want to call it. He's a head case on offense in crunch-time, and it's gotten progressively worse since he's been in the league. This isn't like a catastrophic knee injury where time and dedicated rehab will eventually make it better. And Simmons has shown little indication that he understands or is able to address the root causes of his problem. Morey has no other option than to wait it out and hope a decent enough deal will come along for him to salvage some of his pride. I don't see how anyone in their right mind would trade what he's asking for Simmons; he'd be lucky to get McCollum straight up.

I love it. This is gonna be a short rebuild, cuz these guys are ready to play right now!

The FT% is really concerning for projecting his future shooting ability, the rest isn't as meaningful. I worry about RJ for the same reason.

Seriously dude? The Spurs tanked for Duncan. The Cavs tanked for Lebron. Even the ultra tanking Sixers have been a contending (if flawed) team for several years now. You are capable of peering into the souls of front office execs to divine their true motives? More likely you've manufactured an arbitrary definition of what "tanking" is to fit your preferred narrative. It's unclear what the Magic did this year was tanking at all, by your definition. They didn't trade Vucevic to deliberately lose games, they traded him because the Bulls offered assets greater than the future value of Vucevic in exchange. That sound like rebuilding, no?

It's likewise a mistake to not take the benefits of tanking into account and only consider the potential downsides, which the anti-tanking crusaders will happily do. I actually agree that the Magic probably should have kept Vuc, but these anti-tanking arguments are getting tiresome. Would you feel better if people used the word "rebuilding" instead? There are plenty of examples to support both sides of the argument, and so much of team success comes down to dumb luck outside of the draft lottery that it's really a waste of time to get all worked up over it.

Yep I like Portis too, but the Magic have young bigs that need to play as much as possible!

It's odd. People in the media are saying Atkinson is the leading candidate yet we don't even know if he's interviewed with the team? What the hell's going on? In other news, I haven't seen Clifford being mentioned for any of these open jobs. Seems like the consensus around here is that he was the one that wanted to leave, wonder if he's starting to regret that now?

Ok, that's probably where I got confused. These guys must be bosom buddies or something.

For some reason I thought Hammond was higher on the chain of command than Weltman, this is incorrect? What exactly does Hammond do? We don't hear a peep from him ever.

I really hope it's Atkinson, guy did a great job developing a team with BKN. Was a victim of circumstance with KD and Kyrie wanting their own guy.

He's got Kispert in the right spot at least.

Yep, smoked. Just looking at the box-score you could chalk it up to hot 3pt shooting by the Bucks, but the Heat defense was lazy and confused from the get go. They looked demoralized, probably realizing that if they can't beat the Bucks when they shoot like crap, they can't beat them at all. Chuck did GAURANTEE a Bucks sweep though, so epic Heat comeback incoming.

Don't remember a lot of people saying he sucked or anything, but Atlanta's choice to not take Luka was rightfully questioned at the time. I don't think it's hindsight to say that was an objectively bad decision, especially since Reddish hasn't shown much. Trae will be a good, exciting player for a long time but that trade will haunt the Hawks forever.

Maybe if the Bulls pick ends up late lottery, but if it's top ten there's going to be much more talented players available.