JJZFL

I really hope you're right about Vuch/Biyomobo. I don't think I could stand another season of Vuch plodding up and down the court, making sour faces at opponents as they go by him for layups, and in general showing no fire. And Biyombo isn't really much fun to watch either, even though at least he tries.... A new starting center would be a great start to a badly needed new look for the Magic.

"And for the 68th time please explain in detail how you would have built this “winning team”......Please enlighten us" is a straightforward question? It's an absurd and sarcastic comment, sort of phrased as a question, designed to show that I don't have a detailed plan with the various moves I would have made, trades I would have proposed, and so on. Again, I'm not a GM nor is anyone else in this forum, and that's not even what this discussion is about. The discussion is about the pros and cons of tanking. There has actually been some good back and forth about it just in the past few pages of this thread, you might have in fact learned something if you'd bothered to read it instead of just throwing bricks at me. But it's getting pretty clear that unlike years ago when others would have piled on after your comments, no one is much interested in it anymore. So this is my last response to you about this.

Agree with you and MagicDoc about Birch.

Ah, bringing back unpleasant memories of 5-6 years ago when if you had any doubts about Henningan being a genius, you got posts like this telling you to shut up unless you could be a better GM. This is no better than the argument someone made recently that certain sportswriters weren't qualified to write because they hadn't themselves won any championships. I'm no GM. I have a different job. I don't spend all my time evaluating players. I don't have a staff who evaluates players reporting to me. I don't have conversations with other GM's. I don't talk to our coach. I dislike the tanking strategy for reasons I have posted many times. I prefer maximizing what you have, as we did with "heart and hustle". There are plenty of reputable basketball people who also eschew tanking. Instead of addressing that with reasoned discussion, as have many others in posts above, you would rather throw rocks with posts like this. Fine. Doesn't seem to have the backing it had about 5 years ago, though, after people have seen what the Magic have gone through the past 5 years. You might need to come up with a new gig.

We agree on this. At this point I’m resigned to us mailing it in for the rest of the year, whatever the consequences for the summer and for possibly retarding development of some players we would like to see develop. I’m really just hoping that we’re not having this same conversation this time next year regarding the savior du jour from that draft.

This is true. The only thing tanking guarantees is that your team will be terrible. Hoping to draft that one “centerpiece” who can single-handedly turn things around isn’t impossible, but it’s very unlikely. How many more years will be rooting to tank starting mid-January or so? Every draft it looks like some of the players will make a huge difference. I remember how people wanted us to tank for Wiggins, who would by himself make us into a contender. Everyone is hoping history will repeat itself and give us another Shaq, a quick fix, instead of actually going through the hard work of building a winning team. Building a winning team requires a single minded focus on winning rather than losing.

I hope you’re right. But I’m not so sure Gordon would bank on some rookie turning things around. Not like there’s a LeBron in this draft. I suspect he’d rather see some signs of life from this team now. Instead he’s seeing just the opposite. On a separate point, I don’t really understand the thing about keeping the awful team together for another year so that they could evaluate them. All the previous years games were readily available for them to have watched. Making the fans go through another year of this wasn’t a positive from my standpoint.

Sorry responded to wrong post

We will see. Yes all these losses may get us a marginally better chance at a higher draft pick. But everyone ignores the downsides, including demotivated players going in to the summer with no motivation to work on their games, even less confidence going in to next season, possibly players who people want to keep such as Gordon looking to go elsewhere so they can play for a team that isn’t terrible, and so on. You’re only looking at one side of the ledger.

Partly, yes. But one of those PG's was Payton, who we're probably better without. While it was a tough stretch, at the time most felt we should have won at least 3-4 of those 9 games. Had we done that and not had the 9 game losing streak, the whole season might have turned out differently. My only point is that Ross being there, and playing a good number of minutes, didn't stop us from falling apart.

That's true. But those numbers are skewed by the fast start that we had, which turned out to be unsustainable. Some of the other points being made above are also correct, but the conclusion that we were "thriving" with Ross is just wrong. We were well into our tailspin by the time he went out.

We lost 9 in a row in November when Ross was in the lineup. Injuries are not what make us a bad team.

Game not on tv?

Totally agree with all of this.

Amen to all that. I very much hope that you’re right.

Works for me :)

29% when he’s in, 30% when he’s out. Doesn’t sound significant. Except there was an adjustment period when Vuch first went out, and Birch started playing a lot of minutes. By the end of that, we were playing well, the effort looked great, and we went 6-8 in the 14 games before Vuch returned. Since then of course, we’ve looked horrible and the w-l reflects that.

Again our w-l was better when he was out. I thought our offense looked more fluid without him also. Ball stops when he gets it. Argument for keeping him in is if you want to lose.

I’m not nearly as optimistic as you are. I think the team will have a very hard time bouncing back from this awful season unless there are wholesale changes. Too many players on this team who’ve developed a losing mindset.

If the guy is so toxic to the team overall that he’s better on the bench, then you can’t run the offense through him. Can’t make the decision in a vacuum.

Or perhaps the constant losing has worn Vuch down to a shell of what he was. One of the downsides that’s not talked about enough of losing “meaningless”games year after year is that it builds a losing mindset and fosters bad habits.

Oh? Why is that?

Hopefully a lot less than 376. If we have to watch his listless effort for another season it may be too much for me. +1 from me for ROCK’s post above.

I believe team has a better w-l when Vuch doesn’t play.

I agree. If we have a lot of change I think it could help break us out of this rut. And totally agree about no more lackadaisical defense, which sets a bad tone for everyone. +1 from me