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We have to remember that San Antonio basically handed two games where they were ahead in the last 12 seconds to New York. Game 2 in San Antonio where with them ahead by one point and only about 12 seconds left, Wemby threw a pass to I believe Castle’s back which Brunson stole and then got fouled. Absent that mistake, San Antonio was very likely to have won that game. And we also saw what happened at the end of game four, when San Antonio again had the ball with about 11 or 12 seconds left, and ahead by one, instead of trying to dribble out the clock and get fouled, Fox foolishly went for a layup try which was blocked. Absent those two gross and unforced errors in critical situations, I suspect San Antonio wins the series. So I think overall they did a good enough job. You can’t account for people throwing the game away in the final seconds.

That’s probably true, but his very large role in our terrible performance in the second half of game six will always bother me. His careless turnover in the back court when he was dribbling the ball without really concentrating was one of the catalysts for their big run.

I have zero expectations about this draft, no matter who they work out.

+1. I’ve felt the same way ever since we embarked on the ill fated tanking strategy following the departure of Dwight Howard. We had the “young guns”. Every draft we were going to be rewarded for being terrible with a first round pick who would single handedly win us a championship. Etc etc.

We really haven’t gotten much out of any of our non lottery first round picks over the past five years, so I wouldn’t be expecting anything significant out of a second round pick.

For whatever it’s worth, betting line I’m seeing for game one at San Antonio has the Spurs favored by 5.5

I agree. I had the same concern. The counter argument is that the fan base won't be too happy if teams that have a shot at the play in all of a sudden purposely lose to avoid playing in the post season. The hope is that would be a "bridge too far" for at least some teams. Personally I'd rather get rid of any link that incentivizes teams to lose in order to get better draft picks, but this is at least probably a partial step in that direction. I believe they've also ramped up penalties for blatant tanking. But there are already rules against that, and they've not been enforced. Whether that will change with this new agreement remains to be seen.

Not only that but I think Memphis would never go for that deal, which in my opinion is awful for them. Edit: Posted this prior to reading all the above posts. I see this point has already been discussed. I stand by my comment though.

Do we consider these guys good enough that we would want to keep them? I don't honestly know anything about the assistant coaches, but there seemed to be a lot of concerns about coaching this past season.

Interviews will definitely play a role, but track record I think will be more important. A lot of people can talk a big game, but there also needs to be good reason to believe they can deliver.

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.