Fultz4thewin

really? 20 teams? and all of them were knocking down our door offering a sg averaging 19ppg?

ok. so if richardson put up great numbers with phoenix and has equaled Carter's production (despite learning our offense) with the magic, Hedo has been much more beneficial to our team than pietrus, and Gortat couldn't have much value here due to low usage How did we get robbed? You said it yourself, Carter is trash and Pietrus can't get any playtime there. We got the best player in that deal (Richardson) and a guy who had a lot of success here (Hedo).

Carter isn't. Pietrus isnt.

you conveniently ignore the fact we needed to overpay or take back a bad contract to get rid of vince. editx2: and JRich averaged 19.3 ppg this year. it's not like he's in the Tracy Mcgrady zone.

banking free throws is for guys who have no shooting touch, thats why you tell middle schoolers to shoot that way. so yeah, maybe that would help dwight. The problem though is he's not back rimming it, he's missing left or right. He'd probably miss just as often banking it.

especially considering we have his bird rights.

His minutes have dwindled all the way up to 27:48 per game in January. He was at 21:48 in november.

if we beat boston i bet we'll be contenders again. if we lose at home we'll be back to pretenders. I can't wait for the playoffs. Dealing with the highs and lows of this forum in a day to day basis is nauseating. All of the chicken littles need to chill, go to other team's boards, and realize that they all are chicken littles over there after losses too. It gives you a little more perspective and you can realize that running all over screaming doom before the all star break really doesn't mean anything. Teams have sucked during the season, teams have dominated during the season. It has little effect on the outcomes in the playoffs. Why worry now when the entire playoff atmosphere could change tomorrow?

I disagree with a lot of your analysis. I think SVG's record speaks for itself. He's developed players and always put them in a position to win. I think you don't watch enough of Phoenix basketball. Gortat isn't performing as a world caliber player, he's getting easy looks courtesy of Nash. He's playing well but he's not an all star center like some around here would have you believe. Gortat isn't an offensive weapon, he's a good opportunist. He hits put backs, catches passes well, and runs the court well. He's similar to Tyson Chandler with New Orleans. You can analyze management one of two ways. Hindsight, where you look at player success now. You can say Ariza is good now so we should have kept him. Gerald Wallace is good now so we should have signed him. Or, you can use the perspective of the time. Ariza was a player with a significant foot injury that had him play in only 35 games in 07-08. He was lanky and flashy but dumb and couldn't shoot. His most significant season with us had him averaging 9 points in 22 minutes per game for a 40 win team that was swept by detroit. He couldn't play SG for us and never played for SVG. Was the trade the best we could have gotten for Ariza? Well, what else was on the table? Depth gets you nowhere in the playoffs. You only play 8 or 9 guys. Courtney Lee was a dime a dozen sg. We made the right move trading him to gamble on Carter. You're underselling Dwight. If he wants to be considered the top center in the NBA then he needs to excel on both ends. J Rich isn't past his prime. one of his best years was last season. We made these trades because our team had no energy. Carter and Lewis needed to go. Lets do our analysis for this season after it's over. You're blasting the painting when only a few brush strokes have been made.

properly using gortat would equal improperly using dwight. I'm cool with that

Top 5 young center? Dwight, Brook Lopez, Roy Hibbert, Marc Gasol, DeMarcus Cousins, Serge Ibaka, Andrew Bogut, Andrew Bynum, Joakim Noah. You could also argue for DeAndre Jordan, Javale McGee, and Darko but I wouldn't say that's definite.

UAnytime you could trade your best offensive guard for a backup ' hustle' guy you HAVE to do it. Let's trade dwight for derek fisher too Fyi that was a response to the nick collison idea

I agree with a lot of this. I like this team offensively better than last season's. I figure that a lot of our problem last year was teams, or specifically boston, was generally able to pick a player to give more of an open look to. When we run our offense, such as a jameer/dwight pick and roll, the defense must collapse a little bit in order to help. A lot of the help last year came from Pierce who was defending Barnes. It's no coincidence that the games we won had Barnes as an efficient offensive contributor. I think we all want a shot creating player but those guys aren't on the market at a price that makes sense for our team. Arenas could be a shot creator for himself but there's too much working against him to set that as a rational expectation at this point. Regardless, I think Otis had "shot creating" potential in mind when he took the risk to trade for him. We'll find out in may if he was correct in bringing him aboard or if his friendship clouded his judgment on this one. I just can't fault management for not finding a shot creating player as they're almost exclusively drafted by teams in the top 10. Who are the shot creating players right now? I think they sort of fit into two categories for perimeter players. The first category are the "franchise players". The guys who can score at will every night. (Kobe, Durant, Lebron, Wade, Pierce, Rose, Deron Williams, Dirk, and I guess Nash has shown he can be one of these guys in the playoffs but he might float between the two) The other category is maybe all star players who can lead a team in scoring but you can't count on them to carry the load against elite defensive teams (Eric Gordon, Monta, Kevin Martin, Granger, Gay, Allen, probably Westbrook and at times Ginobili and Steven Jackson). I probably left some names out but I think my point's been made. I don't think any of these guys were on the market. Maybe Kevin Martin but Morey wouldn't kill his rebuilding plans for the package we were offering. Instead we decided we're going to load up on as many fringe players as we can get our hands on. (Hedo, JRich, Arenas [assumes health]), (Nelson), (JJ, and Anderson) have all shown they are able to be great 2nd option; 3rd option; and 6th man type of players respectively. If we can't get a top level guy we're going to get as many offensive threats as we can on the court at one time. We use ball movement to create for us. We have spacing now and, as cliche as it sounds, a more mentally tough team. I think Carter did a lot of damage to our team's behavior. We're counting on players to carry the perimeter scoring role for singular games. If Dwight can be Dwight and one of the previously mentioned wings can step up then I think we're in a great position. We at least know we can reach the finals with a Hedo/stretch 4/dwight/marksman shooting guard lineup. I just hope that our rotation guys are able to play at a comparable level in the playoffs as they have during the regular season. Anyways, eventually we're going to find an exploitable option on offense. I understand boston's style of play is to grind out wins but our team can't be built to play 2005 era Detroit Pistons "hold the team to 85 points" type of style. We have "Ben Wallace" on at the center but we're missing the other four guys. It's difficult to find a tall point guard who's a legitimate scorer and distributor, a lanky off ball sg, an extremely lanky SF who can be a primary defensive perimeter stopper, and another great post defender (not to mention all of the blue collar types on the bench). If I could built a team from scratch I'd take Westbrook, Wes Matthews, Nicolas Batum, Kevin Love or Josh Smith, and Dwight. I'd stack the bench with a bunch of multi positional guys who could plug into the roster at will. Our team was built around Dwight and Jameer (essentially because he was the best guy available and shows great leadership). Then we picked up other guys who made sense at the time. Every year we have a core group of guys that we need to compliment with players that make sense. I'd love to have a fantasy draft but it doesn't make sense in the realm of GM's laptop dieing... finish later

procrastination

Sports medicine has come a long way in the last decade. Webber and Penny had very little chance to continue their career after surgery. Webber succeeded to a degree, Penny didn't. Now microfracture surgery is advanced enough that most players recover within 8 months. Amar'e and Zach Randolph are two examples of players returning to their previous form.

Yeah, I have a difficult time seeing what puts Dennis Scott above a guy like Hedo.

Girlfriend's brother looked into this last year. You can use player's face as long as its an interpretation and not a picture of their face. Also, don't use jersey numbers. Those contribute to a violation. So you can make a cartoon of a player and have objects and lettering obscuring the jersey numbers. Most of the time teams wont care unless its a large operation or contributing to a negative image of a player.

Playoff Weaknesses 2010: First two series not worth looking in to. Boston game 1: 18 turnovers (7 from Dwight). Dwight not being able to go 1 on 1 (shoots 3-10 from the field). Poor three point shooting. Lewis/Barnes/Pietrus provide little to support Nelson/Carter in scoring. only 88 points Boston game 2: Poor rebounding from Lewis/Carter/Dwight. Turnover #'s only mediocre (14). Poor game from point guards. Poor game from Carter. Lewis/Barnes/Pietrus provide little offense. Only 92 points scored. Boston game 3: Poor game from Carter/Nelson/Dwight. Bench other than JJ and Pietrus was horrible. Barnes/Lewis provide next to 0 offense. too many turnovers. Only 71 points scored. Boston game 4: Terrible game by carter. Mediocre offense from barnes/lewis enough to support dwight and jameer. Nelson too many turnovers. Backup point guard nonexistent. Too many turnovers. Boston game 5: Carter Terrible. Barnes/Lewis efficient enough to support Dwight/Nelson/Bench offensively. Dwight 4 Turnovers. Boston game 6: Carter scores but inefficiently. Nelson bad game poor shooting and 5 tos. Lewis/barnes nonexistent offensively. Only score 84 points. Poor three point shooting. Common themes Lewis/Barnes/Pietrus/Carter inefficient/nonexistent offensively. Nelson too many turnovers. Dwight poor offense/too many turnovers. Poor bench scoring other than JJ. Jwill only scoring 18 points combined in the 6 games. Magic moves during offseason and trades: Get rid of Lewis/Barnes/Pietrus/Carter. Get ball handling support for Nelson so he can take a step further toward his strengths (shooting) instead of literally being the only capable distributor on the team (Hedo). Dwight improving offensively. Bench scoring improving naturally (JJ/Ryan) and through transactions (Q-rich/Arenas). Have Hedo/Jrich take over the Carter role of late game hero. Improve streaky three point shooting by bringing in guys who have career three point shooting numbers of 35.4% (43.1% in his last 10 playoff games Arenas) 37.2% (42.1% in the playoffs Jason Richardson) 35.7 (39.4 in the playoffs Q-Rich) 38.4% (38.6% during our finals run Hedo). Get rid of old legs Jwill/AJ for young Arenas/Duhon. Three players who've proven limited in the playoffs into primary roles? Who? Hedo who we've already had quite a bit of playoff success with? Jason Richardson who was the second or third option during the Golden State series where they beat a 67 win #1 seed? When he stepped his game up and averaged 19.1 ppg on 48% shooting? Or the guy last year who was the primary perimeter scorer on a western conference finals team. The guy who put up 42 points, 29 points, and 28 points in three of their first round wins; 27 and 21 points in two games in a sweep of the spurs; or the guy who managed to hit 14 of 35 threes and average 16 points in 6 games on 48.6% shooting against the nba champion lakers? Arenas who goes from being a franchise player to a 6th man? The Guy who when last healthy opened the playoff series against the Cavs by putting up 24 points in 27 minutes despite only playing in 12 games that season and only 5 games in april due to a knee injury? Weaknesses: Scoring Moves: Add as many scorers as we can fit into the rotation. What are these weaknesses that we didn't address? Rebounding? We had 8 more offensive rebounds and 7 more total rebounds than boston in game 1. Game two they outrebounded us by 2. Game 3 they outrebounded us by 7. Game 4 they outrebounded us by 4. Game 5 they outrebounded us by 4. We won by 4. Game 5 we outrebounded them by 17. we won by 21. Game 6 they outrebounded us by 10. Last year we were the 25th best offensive rebound% team and the #1 defensive rebound % team. This year we're the 21st best offensive rebound % team and the #1 defensive rebound % team. You know what would help us with rebounding? Not shooting 41.6%, 39%, 37%, and 43% in losses. What other weakness? Defense? That can't be it as Boston never scored above 96 points. Our post defense was pretty good as Garnett, Perkins, and Glen Davis never really killed us (except Davis in game 3). Their best big man is no longer on the team. Their best offensive guys were Ray Allen and Paul Pierce and three of the guys tasked with defending them Carter/Barnes/Pietrus aren't on the team. Still, if we have competent offense and can score in the mid 90's we probably win game 1 and game 2. Carter doesn't brick two free throws and we score more than 2 points in the last 3 1/2 minutes and we definitely win game 2. So really. What are you talking about? Or do you just want to look for problems like you've done countless times before. Playoff weaknesses? Scoring! When you hold your opponent to 93ppg during the first three games and you only score 84 ppg your problem is scoring. During the finals when you only score 75, 96 (in overtime), 91, and 86 points in losses than your problem is scoring. 07-08 we only score 72, 93, 89, and 86 points in losses to the Pistons. What is the problem? Scoring! What did we do? Get rid of the players who don't score. Insert players that have a history of scoring. Weakness addressed!

Long term is where this deal is going to hurt us. Long term is where salary comes to play. I don't mind having a 9/4 backup point guard who is a threat to explode for big numbers during a single season, but those types of stats don't match a gigantic salary like that. One potential bright spot is that Arenas is more likely to perform well for the duration of his contract. Lewis has 894 regular season games under his belt (30,764 minutes) with an additional 64 playoff games (2,463 minutes). Playing him in the post is going to shorten his career. In comparison, Peja Stojakovic began to decline during the 08-09 season after 648 games and 71 playoff games. Rashard's decline is likely to take a similar path as they have similar game styles and measurables. During the 09-10 season Peja became strictly a jump shooter and was very inefficient. Paul/Collison and West took up enough attention to keep Peja as a 5th option corner three to space out the defense. This year he was cut by toronto after 8 total games. Arenas is 20-30lbs lighter than Lewis and he plays guard so his legs should last longer than a big man. He's only played in 507 games (18,528 minutes) and 20 playoff games (828 minutes). Though he had the knee surgeries they aren't "Penny" type of knee surgery anymore. He's a few years removed from the damage so if he can take care of himself then he should still be productive. This is a risky scenario though. The magic took two gambles with this trade. First, that Arenas can be a piece that gets us back into the finals and keeps Dwight happy and in Orlando. Second, that several injuries and 47 games played in the three seasons prior to the 2010-2011 year is a better risk to take than Lewis averaging 12 ppg with us, approaching 930 games by season's end, adding an additional 15-25 playoff games on top of it, and another possible 200 games before his contract is up (with $10,000,000 owed if waived I'm not sure if we could get a great deal for him).

Arenas for Lewis in the short term was a good deal. Lewis portrayed a complete lack on energy during this season with the magic. He was shooting his worst fg% since his rookie year, his worst 3pt% since '03 and his worst ft% since '00. This was his production against "good" teams: Miami- 0-9 2 points 3 rebounds L Atlanta- 2-7 4 points 6 rebounds W Utah- 6-15 16 points 7 rebounds L SA- 5-10 14 points 3 rebounds L Miami 5-10 14 points 4 rebounds W Chicago- 4-8 13 points 4 rebounds W Atlanta 3-11 10 points 3 rebounds L Portland- 4-10 11 points 6 rebounds L Utah- 6-9 11 points 6 rebounds L In other games he's played well and he's played poorly but we need him to show up against better teams. We'd still win 50 something games with him on the roster but I don't know if he would have increased his performance. In November I excused his play as I don't like to judge shooters based on a low number of games. By the time he was traded, Lewis had played in 25 games with the magic and that is enough to judge him by. His energy was nothing like it was during previous years. His play, in addition to Carter's, had a direct effect on the body language of this team. Although you could point out a few "efficient" games in the list above, none of those stat lines really impress anyone after watching Bass and Anderson over the last month or so. Bass and Anderson's stat lines against good teams post rashard trade: Bass; Anderson Atlanta: 5-12 13 points 5 rebounds; DNP L Dallas: 3-5 6 points 3 rebounds; DNP L San Antonio: 8-11 17 points 6 rebounds; 3-8 10 points 3 rebounds W Boston: 8-15 21 points 9 rebounds; 2-9 10 points 9 rebounds W New York: 5-8 14 points 7 rebounds; 5-8 14 points 5 rebounds W New Orleans: 3-13 6 points 9 rebounds; 5-9 14 points 8 rebounds L OKC: 3-8 8 points 4 rebounds; 5-10; 15 points 5 rebounds L Boston: 4-7 13 points 3 rebounds; 5-8 16 points 8 rebounds L Chicago 4-9 9 points 4 rebounds; 2-8 9 points 4 rebounds L As you can see, after trading Lewis, one of our Power Forwards have generally matched or exceeded "typical" Rashard production during big games. Our win/loss record is the same against top level teams too (despite facing an new rotation with players who haven't adjusted yet). At the very least you could argue that the "starting power forward" (or player who gets starters minutes in this case) production is equal before/after the trade. At the very best you could argue that the Power Forward position is more explosive offensively in big games after the trade (Both Anderson and Bass have had better single game stat lines than Lewis in big games this season). Thus the value change of the power forward position post trade (in big games) is greater than or equal to zero (i.e. we haven't taken a step backward). (observational note: production of "bench" power forward before/after trade (bench players after the trade being PF with less minutes) is similar. Still supports the >0 findings) Prior to the Lewis/Arenas trade Duhon was the primary backup point guard. In the same big games used in the Lewis comparison, Duhon had the following stats: Miami: 0-1 1 point 1 assist 2 TO Atlanta: 1-3 4 points 4 assists 2 TO Utah: 0-4 0 points 3 assists 2 TO SA: 2-6 6 points 2 assists 0 TO Miami 0-1 0 points 1 assist 2 TO Chicago: 1-5 2 points 1 assist 2 TO Atlanta: 3-6 7 points 2 assists 1 TO (playing as a starter) Portland: 1-1 2 points 1 assist 0 TO So in big games prior to the trade, Duhon had 22 points 15 assists and 11 turnovers in 8 games. He usually played 18-24 minutes in these games too (lowest being 14:34 against Miami; Highest being 32:34 against atlanta) Post-Trade Arenas stats in big games: Atlanta: 2-11 10 points 3 assists 2 TO Dallas: 1-6 2 points 4 assists 2 TO San Antonio: 6-14 14 points 9 assists 3 TO Boston: 2-9 5 points 2 assists 2 TO New York: 4-10 10 points 6 assists 3 TO Dallas: 5-11 14 points 1 assist 3 TO New Orleans 2-5 4 points 2 assist 2 TO Oklahoma City: 3-8 9 points 5 assists 0 TO Boston: 2-6 7 points 2 assists 3 turnovers Chicago: 5-13 11 points 3 assists 4 TO So in 10 big games Arenas has 88 points 27 assists and 26 turnovers. His worst games (lets say boston as it allowed him to have a few games with the team) he went for 5 points 2 assists and 2 turnovers. Production wise, thats comparable to any big game Duhon has played in. In Duhon's one start he had 7 points 2 assists and 1 turnover (32 minutes). In Arenas' one "start" (chicago) he had 11 points 3 assists and 4 turnovers (32 minutes). While I wouldn't say most of these performances are "good", his offense has been much more dangerous to other teams than Duhon's. His minutes in big games hasn't been that much different than Duhon"s either. He isn't playing up to contract, but our backup point guard position is better with him than with Duhon. As you can see, Arenas/Bass/Anderson > Lewis/Bass/Duhon thus the trade was beneficial in the short term. Also, concerning Arenas. We don't really need him to be a high volume scorer on this roster. Between Jameer, JRich, Dwight, JJ, Anderson, Bass, and Hedo we have enough scorers. What we need Arenas to do is have one or two ben gordon/J.R. Smith/Jason Terry type of games in the playoffs. Eventually we're going to need that one explosive scoring night to pull out a win when we otherwise should have lost. Something like that could change an entire playoff series. He's shown he can do that on Washington this year against Chicago and us. I don't care if he keeps his current production up for the rest of the year as long as he has a few good games in the playoffs that help us along the way. 9 points and 4 assists off the bench is fine for the regular season as long as we're still winning. Our overall record before the trade was 16-9 after we are 15-8 (though it is notable that after the 3 game adjustment period with a short roster in the first game and no anderson in all three, the magic are 15-5. Thats a win% of 75%) We have 35 games remaining. If we can pull off the current trend of 15-8 throughout the rest of the season we'll have between 52-53 wins on the season. If we keep up the 15-5 type of play we'll win 56-57 games for the rest of the season. We have a pretty easy schedule the rest of the way. 20 of the 35 games left are against teams we're definitely better than. We get Miami, LAC, NO, LAL, WASH, SAC, OKC, CHA, NYK, CHI, POR, DEN, NJN, CHA, MIL, CHI, and IND at home. We get MEM, WASH, BOS, PHI, MIA, SAC, GSW, PHX, LAL, MIL, CLE, NYK, NYK, ATL, TOR, CHA, and PHI away. After we play at Boston this upcoming Sunday, we get 8 of the next 9 games at home. We can use that to gain momentum into a tough March where we play 10 of 15 away including a 5 game west coast trip that somehow ends in Milwaukee. If we can make it through that April is pretty easy.

Teams were busting down our door offering all stars for the guy averaging 3.6ppg and 4.2 rpg. I know we knew his value but other teams aren't going to stop and say "hey, this guy might be good and even though you guys will never be able to capitalize on his value yourselves, why don't i just do you a favor and toss you a great player." J Rich/Hedo/Clark for Carter/Pietrus/Gortat/First in a horrible draft is a pretty fair deal. J Rich might be a free agent, but we have his Bird Rights and can go over the cap to sign him. He is a legitimate scorer and although he's taking his time getting acclimated to the team, his playoff resume speaks for it's self. 19.5ppg 6 rebounds per game on 49%/42%/74% shooting in 27 games against the "who's who" of Western Conference Playoff teams (67 win Dallas team and WCF participant Utah in '07 and Portland, San Antonio, and LA (champions) of last year. He's going to pay off for this team. Gortat wasn't going to do anything for us. His value is entirely based around "what if Dwight isn't in the game" which isn't something we should count on. We should be stronger in the other positions so that we can compliment Dwight better. The Lakers don't have a stud 6th man SG in case Kobe gets hurt because it limits the value of that roster spot. They want to be able to put the best 4 other guys around Kobe so he can excel in big games. I loved having Gortat on the Magic but after the trade our Point Guards, Shooting Guards, Small Forwards, and Power Forwards are all playing at a higher level than they did previously. That's what we need to win in the playoffs. In big playoff games we need Dwight to play 40+ minutes. In decisive games against Boston Gortat played 10; 19; and 10 minutes. The finals year in decisive games against boston Gortat played 5 (Battie played 3); and 10 (Battie played 3) minutes. In game 6 against Cleveland Gortat played 6 1/2 minutes (Battie didn't play) and against the lakers in the finals Gortat played 20 minutes (due to a throw in the towel 4th quarter); 15 minutes (enhanced by overtime minutes); 4 minutes (battie played 9); 4 minutes (battie played 11); and almost 9 minutes. Our goal is playoff success. We obviously need to carry extra big men to throw at other teams when our PF/C get into foul trouble (and with only 13 players on roster, including a dilapidated rookie, we definitely will pick somebody up in the next few months) but those big men don't need to be very talented. Since Hedo has been better that Q Rich (and better for Dwight) Jason Richardson has been better than Carter (and better fit for our team), Clark has shown enough to justify his spot just outside the rotation, and the loss of Pietrus has resulted in JJ playing the best basketball of his career I'm fine with the trade we made. I'm also fine with the Lewis->Arenas trade for the same reasons (I'll put that argument in the arenas thread though)

Vote Nick Anderson He was the magic's first draft pick. He's played in the most games. He's near the top of all quantitative categories for the magic and in the top 10 for most of the per game categories. nominate nelson. he's had a huge impact on the franchise and belongs in the top 10.

I'd rather keep the current rotation. Let anderson get as many minutes as possible but keep him on the bench. It's working for him