JJZFL

It is the silver lining to not having a lottery pick ( or in our case not having any first round pick at all).

I guess we’ll see when the finals play out, but to your point, shouldn’t the goal always be to compete for a championship, rather than second place?

Totally agree with all of that. I am certainly not sitting around moping because of the Magic. Too many things to enjoy, I don’t have enough time for all of them :). Just glad to have a break from the Magic for awhile as well.

Yeah. Felt terrible for 36 hours after that game. Not in a mood to risk having that happen again any time soon, which is why I didn’t watch game 7. That’s what I mean about needing a long time to recover before I watch more games. No contradiction there. Certainly agree with you about not losing any marbles. Just not sure I see a clear optimistic path for this team going forward. If you mean by the “sun will come out tomorrow” that there are plenty of reasons to enjoy life other than the Magic, of course that’s true. If you mean the Magic have a bright future, I’m not sure about that.

At this point, I’m looking forward to six months without watching a Magic game. I felt terrible for like 36 hours after game 6 and I need a good long time to recover from that. Are we going to get it together with what we have and a better coach? Can we really beat the best teams, such as Oklahoma, even with the best coach in the league? Will upgrading our bench get us to that point? Hard for me to gauge how much we have, realistically, to look forward to.

It’s an interesting question. One of the overriding considerations is whether we actually have more than we think, and whether better coaching would bring that out? On the other hand, it did look like there were a few players who probably weren’t up to playoff level basketball. Goga would be the first on my list there. Suggs was of course awful, but has shown evidence in the past that he can play much better. That could be partly a coaching issue. Neither Da Silva nor Black really showed enough consistently during the playoffs to be a great option off the bench. Mo is probably not a center, at least not in the playoffs. So while it’s intriguing to wonder what a different coach could do with this group, the reality is we probably need at least a few fresh faces, even if not in the starting lineup. That being said, I’m still concerned with Suggs being the point guard.

This is one of the few points on which we disagree. I think the experiment of having our forwards try to set up the offense has had more than enough opportunity, and I don’t think it works. I would like to see us get a real point guard for a change. The problem then is that it leaves either Suggs or Bane coming off the bench. So a trade of some sort might be necessary. Which is fine with me. I am not wedded to the idea of bringing back the same starting five.

You caught me, TMF :)

Good points.

I also wish we had Jeff Turner back on the team, because that would mean he wasn’t announcing.

Well at least we made the record books in game six.

Amen. That is definitely not what we need.

LOL. Love the last part. No one has advocated more for a PG in this forum than me over the years, but if Suggs slides to the 2 with a true PG in the 1, then you only have two spots left for Banchero, Wagner, and Bane, assuming you still have a center. So in that scenario, I think Suggs goes to the bench.

Hard to be positive after this series, but I would echo others in the hope that there’s a coaching change. I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Mosley has taken the team as far as he can. I also hope the change comes quickly so there is certainty about it over most of the offseason.

I watched almost none of this game, and I consider that a good thing. I’m honestly happy that we have about six months to recover before we start watching them again. They have become an exercise in masochism.