JJZFL

What is your take on his post? You think Clifford decided to leave because he thought this team had good prospects?

We can call him names but I agree with the substance of his post.

This doesn’t bode well going forward. Cliff clearly sees this team being on a losing trajectory for a significant amount of time to come. Given Orlando’s history as a head coaching graveyard these past few years, and our recent futility, I can’t imagine that many good candidates would be enthusiastic about coming here. Quoting from Bianchi in today’s Sentinel: “Weltman’s strategy is a common one: Lose big now so you can win big later. While this is the accepted way of rebuilding in the NBA; it is still a longshot. Clifford, it seems, simply wasn’t willing to roll the dice on the rest of his career by betting that this latest iteration of a Magic rebuild was actually going to work. And who can blame him? After all, this isn’t what he signed up for.” Jacque Vaughn, anyone?

I remember all the people on our forum who didn’t want Trae Young, felt he was one dimensional, wouldn’t work in the playoffs etc. Sone were even thanking Atlanta for making a historic mistake which allowed us to get Bamba.

Depending where we land, I could see them combining some of the picks into a trade to move up if that option becomes available.

Anything is possible but in general it’s usually not ideal. In Memphis case, two of the starters are older veterans, and a third is Morant, so a different situation. Also, 8 players on that team are 24 or older.

Good summary. I would argue that such an exaggerated youth movement is not a good thing and would retard our teams development.

This. I don't care who it is, I want players who make the other 4 guys on the court better on the offensive end, not worse. I think even if the team has deficiencies on offense, all the more reason why it's important to try to find open shots. I don't want one guy chucking the ball up even if he's the best shooter, it messes up the offense for everyone else.

Definitely been a problem. If we’re going to get the young guys to play team basketball, you can’t have a veteran playing like that and getting tons of minutes.

Scoring is definitely a concern. I believe in the modern NBA you need multiple solid three point threats on the floor at all times.

Well said.

You put together the best players you can based on the draft, trades, hopefully identifying a diamond in the rough or two, good coaching so they play team basketball, and teaching the players to compete. Similar to what we did the "heart and hustle" team. You lay the foundation for success if you get a break or two. What I'm hearing is the same arguments we heard 10 years ago. Tanking is inevitable, there is no other choice. It is not inevitable. Plenty of other teams that have lost good players haven't turned to tanking. Given how the last 10 years turned out, I'm actually surprised to hear the same arguments again. But that's fine. People have different opinions. It is surprising how discussions about tanking seem to bring out the worst in people, though. 10 years ago I was practically called a Nazi for my opinions on the subject. Of course, most of the more strident posters at the time have since left this forum after all their predictions were proven wrong. I don't see an exact parallel at all between then and now. There are significant differences as has been pointed out by CTMagicUK and others. I hope those differences are enough to lead to a better outcome this time around.

I hope this turns out to be correct. We will see how it translates next season, whenever that starts. I actually don't think they've announced when it will start.

That is the tank strategy. But I think it's higher risk than you make it out to be. If you either don't get very high picks, or if the picks don't turn out to be franchise changers, then all you have left is to be bad, and keep trying it again.

To the rest of the forum: We've had plenty of discussions where we disagreed about various issues, but in general we've managed to avoid attacking the posters we've disagreed with and have not asked them to stop posting. He can characterize my post as "anti-tanking bs" as a way to try to belittle my post (doesn't work) but in doing so he avoids the issue I raise. So to you I ask: Do you think it's a good for the NBA (or any pro sports league) to have roughly a third of the teams competing to lose the most games for the last third of the season? If so, why? If not, what would you do to change it?

Good summary

Done

Sorry we don’t agree. Feel free to block my posts. Otherwise stop complaining about posts that don’t agree with you. It’s getting tiring.

It makes tanking even less likely to succeed....which is fine with me. I'd actually make the odds for all the non playoff teams the same. Having teams compete to see who can lose the most for the last third of the season is a travesty that isn't good for the league.

He was 10 for 25. When you don't have great talent on the floor it's all the more important to play good team basketball. I would really have liked for him to end the season showing how he could make the other players on the floor better, which is especially important for a point guard. He did the opposite. Hopefully it won't carry over to next season, but I believe it was a missed opportunity.

LOL

He took 25 shots. That's a big reason. Last 5 games he's had 2,3,6,0,3 assists. Average of about 3 assists per game in about 30 minutes per game. He's also had 19 turnovers in those 5 games. He's our starting point guard. If we want to use these "meaningless" games (I don't believe there is such a thing) to develop our young players, that's not happening based I'm what I'm seeing to end the season. He's developing in the wrong direction.

Don't want to see any opinions different than yours? Sorry about that, but this is a message/discussion board, not an echo chamber. Many people on here agree with you. A few don't. My point about Cole Anthony stands.

We'll see. We were equally excited about our young, high energy team with high draft picks 8-10 years ago and we know how that worked out.

I know there was no master plan to tank the season and I've already agreed with moving on from the three you mention. I don't like tanking at any point but that is now water under the bridge. Let's hope we get a great draft pick and I'm proved wrong about this.