JJZFL
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Posts posted by JJZFL
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When is the lottery held which determines in what order the teams get to pick?
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GM polls give too much credit to the big market golden boys who make obvious decisions. Shane Battier is willing to take a huge pay cut to sign with Miami? Well in that case, Miami's GM for GM of the year!
Hennigan actually has to put himself on the line and make difficult decisions.
Why is Shane Battier willing to take a "huge pay cut" to play with Miami? Not because he likes the climate better than Orlando.
Create an environment where players want to take pay cuts to play for you and you deserve to be GM of the year. I don't see anyone offering to take pay cuts to play in Orlando.
Jury on Hennigan very much out. If we start getting good in the next couple of years then he's a great success. If we're terrible for the next 5-10 years then he's not.
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we were in a lot of games last year. We gave up a lot of points from opposing guards, but some of those loses were because of scoring or the lack there of. I just don't feel that jv will be judged much next year because our competitive window is marked for 2014-2015.
We will have a lot of cash, two 2014 picks, and our young players (including out 2013 pick) will have some seasoning to them.
Well you may be right about that but I hope you aren't. I think there need to be benchmarks for a coach to meet every year, even if the team is not expected to compete for a playoff spot. Giving the coach a two year free pass no matter what, even if for example the team continues to look disorganized on defense, is not a good idea as far as I'm concerned.
JV was very supportive of the players last year. That is a good thing with a young team. At the same time, you have to have expectations that you clearly communicate. Anyone who's raised a child knows that you don't praise the child when they've done something wrong. I didn't hear much of JV holding the team to any standards at all last year. Now, maybe he felt they were very fragile because of their youth and roster changes. Fair enough. I just want to see a little different JV this upcoming season.
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I suppose it comes down to what you'd rather have. A team like ours that is in development and might take a good few years before it becomes truly competitive. Or a team like the Lakers which will have (potentially) a lot of cap space available to them to bring in a 'big three' to lead them into the future. As it stands I can't make a judgement on which would be best, because our situation depends on our current players developing, our future draft picks developing, and moves in free agency. Whereas theirs is dependant on them grabbing a few stars and moulding them into a unit like the Celtics and Heat did. Both have their risks, and both have their rewards. I look forward to seeing what route the Lakers take, though I suspect they'll try to land a few stars in 2014 free agency.
Really good post by Mike(I only reposted part of it).
I think there is a lot of assuming going on (not by Mike but by lots of other posters in this thread) that in 2-3 years, players like Vuk and Harris and Harkless are going to be strong pieces of a very good team. I would like to think that will happen, but it's by no means certain. Just having lots of young players does not mean that in 2-3 years, when they are veterans, that they will become playoff material.
That's why I don't think the Lakers would trade with us. We might be really good in a few years IF our players develop well. Or we might continue to be terrible for a very long time if that doesn't work out. Too much of a risk.
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I think jv will be judged mostly on player development. I don't think rob mines losing games next year because of the draft placing in 2014. Rob is in a win win situation. Wins or high draft choice.
The big key will come in the offseason and trading dead line. If we don't keep the vets (baby, nelson, aa) and we don't sign any big names with the te or fa, we are looking to tank. If we keep our vets, than we will improve.
It depends a little on what you mean by player development. If we continue to see sloppiness on defense, even if it looks like some of the individual players are improving, to me that's a problem.
I think defense depends less on talent than offense. No doubt we have young and athletic players. Defense has a lot to do with attitude, intensity, and being in the right place at the right time. To me a lot of that is a reflection on the coaching.
I certainly don't mind if we lose a lot of games next year, but we shouldn't be getting blown out repeatedly in the first half. We need to make the other teams earn every point. As long as I see that kind of defense from our guys, I'll be satisfied no matter what the record.
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I agree. There were so many variables that it is hard to judge Jacque Vaughn on this season. I would have liked to see us make less mistakes on defense where the other team got easy lay-ups as the season progressed, but as you said we did keep changing personnel.
I think the personnel will be a lot more stable next season. Most of our players will have had at least one year in the NBA. I don't expect us to compete for a significant playoff spot next year but I do expect our defense to be better, with significantly fewer mistakes.
I think it's possible JV may be judged somewhat on next season, not just 2014-2015. If there continue to be many defensive mistakes leading to easy points for other teams, and if teams continue to regularly score 60+ against us during 1st halves, I believe questions will come up.
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I do agree. A lot of the points in the paint came from slashing from guards, pick and roll drop offs, poor rotations from players like andrew, and bad shooting that lead to lay ups. Harris and baby have never played together so we dont know how they play on the court. Harris needs to improve his 3 ball to play more sf.
You cant have one or two good defenders. we need the team to be on one page. I am still waiting to see if harkless is a good defender. He only had a few good defensive games. (the new york game was a good one of him vs melo.) He has great length and athleticism but he gets beat off the dribble easy and cant get around picks very well. I would like to see more stops. Its one thing to get assigned the best player on the opposing team but it is another thing to stop them or make them work. He has the tools. can he put them together and become a top flight defender?
I agree with everything in your post. I guess the question I have is whether coaching had anything to do with the team not all being, as you say, "on one page" on defense. I also wonder if our young players (certainly including Harkless) were adequately developed from a defense standpoint during the season.
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I never said nick played good defense. I did say harris and baby would be nasty on defense.
You dont grab 11.9 rebs per game and not use energy. Nick was 2nd in the nba in rebs per game and 3rd in double doubles. I think he gave great energy. I don't think he played great defense (one on one or team), but he did give great energy. Nick helped limit second chance pts and closed out defensive stops by grabbing the critical boards to end processions. In case you did not know, defensive rebounds is part of defense. Therefore, he helps in his own way.
I do think that harris played good defense. He played both the sfs well and the pfs well. He quickly picked up rotations well with out a lot of practice and was very vocal to help for team defense. JV stated how versatile harris was in guarding different positions. He (harris) also grab 8.5 boards a game for us and got 1.5 blocks, and .9 steals. At 20 years old, I think he did a good job.
We all know that baby can defend and give energy, so enough said. Its baby.
I think scoring was a big problem for our defense. Missed shots, lead to easy buckets for the other team. I also think we had a problem with sgs and pgs. The bobcat games are still in the back of my mind. Shot blocking was a big issue but harris and harkless helped latter in the season but we could still improve.
I agree with some of what you're saying. Nick did do a very good job of rebounding. And Harris played with energy at times. However, we gave up over 101 points per game. No one can seriously argue that our defense was good. Especially not our interior defense, which was awful. I can't find stats for points in the paint, but it sure seemed like we gave up a bunch. We were badly out of position many times, allowing easy lay-ups. And most worrisome, it seemed like our defense got worse as the season went on, even after baby came back.
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My favorite moment of this past season was when the buzzer rang at the end of the 4th quarter of the final game. Nothing to celebrate when we're this bad.
I hope our young guys are developing. I thought that our defense honestly got worse as the season went along, though, and that worries me. That's not the kind of development I'm looking for.
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AA has disappointed me but he had some positives moments. He was the reason we beat LA and he gave us some scoring. I thought his defense would be better and also his 3pt shot, but it is harder to produce easy buckets on a bad team and hard to keep your energy up when your down a lot every game. I do really want to see how a team of:
Nick
Baby
Harris
AA
Burke
would play together.
I think we would win more games than we would like too. Harris and Baby will be nasty on defense. No second chance points with nick, baby, and harris rebounding everything and giving crazy energy. Burk would give us the easy buckets we need.
Now, I think there will be better pt guards next year; with smart, harrison, and k. Hill, so I would not mind BMac (after a lot of thought). BMac would give us some spacing and allow us to run the jj screen plays (curl and fade reeds). That being said we could get Allen crabbe late for spacing and jj plays and use the pick on someone else like noels.
but the noels injury does scares me.
We already had Nick and Harris on the floor a lot this season. I may have missed something, but I didn't see a lot of "crazy energy" on defense. And I did see an awful lot of second chance points given up.
Let's say for arguments sake that we might get a bit better with a line-up like that, though, and win maybe 30 games. How does that help us develop?
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I'm not too interested in the playoffs with the Magic out. Actually, I think the most interesting thing by far isn't the basketball, rather it's what Dwight will do if the Lakers get booted early (sure looks like that will happen). Will he leave the Lakers? Will be fun to watch.....
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Also, first round picks have guaranteed contracts. Second round picks do not.
Intersting. I did not know that.
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Dear god THANK YOUR FOR THIS QUOTE!!
This is my whole point with Trey Burke. "Oh we need a PG might as well draft Mr. Average" . Ugh, no thanks. We have more needs than just a PG on this team so draft best player available because anything but a SF helps us.
I agree. Take the best player and let the chips fall where they may.
I think that even the current personnel should have been able to play better interior defense than they managed last season. A lot of times they were simply beaten on backdoor or other plays where they were out of position. Other times, it seemed like we lacked effort (especially going after long defensive rebounds). Not sure how much a change in personnel will help with those kinds of problems. Our team is certainly young and athletic enough so that they should be able to play energetic defense.
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Every Orlando fan knows we need a PG of the future, but were not winning anything next year anyways so it's not necessarily anymore important than improving our interior defense (Noel) or outside shooting (B-Mac). I'm completely fine with Meer running the point 1 more year with us either having a 2nd rounder backing him up, or signing some other young cheap guy to back him up.
On a different note, most people make a case for "why" we should draft Trey Burke, but it's just as easy to make a case for why we should draft Noel or B-Mac. Our interior defense was an ABSOLUTE JOKE last year. Far worse than the PG play. Players like Noel are FAR more rare than players like Burke. I can find an average PG in any draft, now a 6"10 PF that runs the floor better than most 2 guards—that's a lot more rare.
As for McLemore, who many hate on here, we really don't have a 2 outside of AA (please, stop with moore) and we have no one on this team that is lethal from DT. Not to mention McLemore is as athletic as any player in this years draft. Oh, and he's 6"5 with a 6"8 wingspan. He can be as good as he wants to be on defense with those measurements.
Bottom Line: Noel, McLemore, Mississippi River, Everyone else.
Oh and: Andrew Harrison > Trey Burke...should have a shot at him next year. I think we miss out on Parker and Wiggins but Harrison is best for us anyways. Okay I'm getting carried away now one year at a time.
I agree with much of what you said. I would mention, though, that it usually takes a couple of years to get aPG ready to play in the NBA.
I agree our interior defense was very poor, laughable at times. However we have quite a few young athletic guys on the team currently. I don't know why our defense was so bad. It may be the coaching as much, or more, than the players. If thats the problem, getting another athletic young guy who can play great defense may not help that much.
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The fact that Jameer is 31 and AA is 27 is why AA should be traded. Jameer is older, clearly not what he was, and yet is still better than Afflalo AND AFFLALO IS IN HIS PRIME.
They aren't directly comparable since they don't play the same position. However, I disagree anyway. Watch Jameer bring the ball up the court to start the half-court offense. He never makes the first pass until the shot clock has run down to at least 14 seconds. Often he waits longer than that. And on defense he's always been a liability.
He's loyal to the Magic organization, a good outside shooter, and a great guy for the community, but overall we badly need a new PG.
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We are operating under the assumption that Hennigan continues to make good decisions....if he doesn't, that will lead to more bad seasons, obviously. That said, in order to truly rebuild, a team needs to hit rock bottom in order to build it back up again. Look at the contenders currently in the NBA. Some got there by free agency and some through the draft, but all of them stunk before they drafted/signed the players needed to win. Teams that consistently win 45 games don't magically make the leap to championship contender. I would rather stink for a few years than be stuck looking at a first round playoff exit for the next 7 years.
I'm not sure I agree with that. The Lakers, Spurs, Celtics and others usually field good teams. And while some of the other teams now doing well did do poorly for awhile, there are plenty of teams who hit bottom and stay there a long time.
Hennigan is a very young GM. I hope he makes the right decisions but every fan for every team hopes that their GM makes the right decisions. And our coaching staff is also unproven. I just think the risks being taken here are underestimated. There is an assumption that in 2-3 years we will be an up and coming playoff team. I sure hope so, but I think the odds are against it.
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There seems to be an assumption in some of the posts that you can tank for a couple of years, get some good young prospects, and then quickly become a playoff contender again. I'm not so sure it's so easy to turn it off and on. I'm looking at some other teams that are terrible this year....Cleveland, Washington, Charlotte, for example. They've all been very bad for at least the past 3 years, and don't show any real signs of turning things around.
I think there is a real risk here. Losing often begets more losing. Players and coaches develop an unhealthy mindset. And it can result in a downwards spiral that can take a very long time to clear up. I hope that doesn't happen here, but we need to at least acknowledge the risk.
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Anyone think Magic will compete for a playoff spot next season?
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Not really dark years considering we turned it around almost immediately by drafting Dwight Howard and Jameer Nelson.
Agreed. The jury is still out on what happens here. There is no guarantee that you rebound over the next few years to become a good team....
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Another blowout.
Do we think the team is getting better and that the young players are developing, at least? Hard to really be certain when you keep getting beaten so badly.
I wonder why Nicholson isn't used more. Magic could sure use some offense....
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Do we think the coaching is doing a good job of developing the young players? Just giving them lots of minutes is not the same as developing them.
Developing great offensive moves and shooting can take time. But defense has a lot to do with effort. I don't see the consistent effort on defense that I think the team should have. To me that raises questions about the coaching.
Would the Lakers Trade Rosters with the Magic?
in Orlando Magic Forum
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I hope you're right but I'd say it's less than a 50-50 proposition.