Justin Jaudon

Interesting tidbit for everyone who thinks Vuc is our only problem on D. In the Skiles year, we were a decent defensive team with Vuc starting 60 games, playing 31 min a game (and Fournier starting over 70, for that matter). In Vaughn's second year, we were a decent defensive team with Vuc starting 57 games and playing 31 min a game. Perhaps there's more to it than Vuc.

Your profile picture gives me such mixed feelings. 'Cause at first I'm like, "Damn it Orlando, you got rid of Oladipo, and now he's an All-Star!!!" But them I'm like, "Meh, you also got rid of Elfrid. I forgive you." (For the record, I don't really forgive them at all)

We'd have to do quite a bit to end up 9th. Basically, every team with a possibility of catching us would have to. That's very unlikely. My guess, just based on averages, is that we'll end up 6th in the rankings. That's a difference of about 10% in chances of getting a 1 or 2 (my math may be wrong there; I'm a writer, Jim, not a mathematician). Not nothing, but not worth screaming over.

I think this is an entirely separate question. We clearly ARE tanking right now. Gordon and Fournier are being held out. Vuc was held out for probably longer than necessary. The only way for us to tank harder is to actively try to lose on the floor. That isn't going to - and shouldn't - happen. I don't see much point in trying to out-tank Memphis and Phoenix, because we aren't catching those teams. I think there's only 2 guys who might be worth tanking for (Doncic and Ayton). 3-10 are probably not separated by much, not enough to get in a tizzy over, anyway.

Oladipo has already proven to be an All-Star. I'm confident Aaron Gordon will be an All-Star soon enough (though it will take his team getting out of the cellar). He's a 22-year-old averaging 18-8-2 while sharing the ball with two other guys who get just as many shots. He's a super hard worker who has already shown an ability and drive to improve his game dramatically. He's a project-able All-Star talent.

It's consistently amusing to me to hear people complain about us not tanking hard enough, not getting enough top picks. We got 3 top five picks in the first three years of our rebuild. We picked 2 very good players in Oladipo and Gordon with the first two, and it's looking like we might have picked a good player in Mario Hezonja. We drafted one guy who's already been an All-Star. Gordon certainly looks like he has that potential. For the 8,000,000th time, this team's failure has not been, and never was, not tanking hard enough. That narrative is so flawed it's absurd. We had talent; multiple All-Star talent. We should have stopped the tanking exactly when we did. We had the horse we should have been running behind. But we Seabuscuit-ed him. We Seabuscuit-ed all of them. We trained our guys to lose, and they lost, regardless of how talented they were. So we sold Oladipo for pennies on the dollar, and now he's leading the 3rd best team in the East. We forced Gordon to switch positions in his 3rd year when he should have been getting ready to break out. We blew our wad on bench garbage and one-dimensional players. It is absolutely myopic to see what this team has done, where it is now, and blame that on not sucking hard enough. We didn't fail to lose, guys. We have been, for now the third straight season, failing to break free of a broken culture. I'm not saying we shouldn't have tanked those first three years. We should have. I'm saying we shouldn't have panicked when things didn't turn around on a dime. We did exactly what a tanking team should do. We sucked, acquired high-level talent through the draft and through trades of hold-over assets. It wasn't tanking we failed at. It was the part that comes after tanking that we failed at. I am utterly convinced that had we stuck it out after the Skiles year - had Skiles put on his big girl panties and Hennigan kept his cool - we would be where Indiana is now. A top 3 team in the East. Put Oladipo (and Sabonis) back on this team. Have us throw FA money at Darren Collison or Tyreke Evens or George Hill or Jeff Teague. Have us in the third year of a coach who improved our record by 10 games in his only season. Have us not give up on Mario Hezonja. A lineup of Tyreke-Oladipo-Evan-AG-Vuc, with maybe a bench led by Payton-Mario-Sabonis-Dedmon. Tell me that's not as good as what Indiana has. Tell me that's not enticing to a big name free agent. Tell me we failed at tanking. No. We succeeded at tanking. We failed when it came time for winning, guys.

I think this is the list of wings who will be competing with Mario for contracts bigger than what we can already offer him: Tyreke Evens Avery Bradley Will Barton JJ Redick KCP Wes Matthews Danny Green Rodney Hood (R) Trevor Ariza Kyle Anderson (R) Rudy Gay Most of these guys are situational, whether they'd go to a contender or a building team. The teams with real big money likely aren't throwing anything substantial at a vet, considering the teams with money mostly are rebuilding. So who's likely to throw a contract at Mario? Who has money? The Bulls, Hawks, and Mavericks probably have the most money, except the Lakers, who won't tie up any money long term they don't have to on anyone but a star, I'd think. Maybe the Kings? The Jazz will go after a more established player. I can't see Phoenix going after him, not when they're already developing at least 3 wings under 25. If the Clippers renounce everyone and commit to rebuild, I could see them making a play. Danilo would be a good mentor for him. I don't think the Knicks will go after him (pretty sure he'd eat up all the cap room they have), but I suppose they might. New Jersey is a solid possibility, I guess. He fits their build (grab young cast-offs for cheap and give them a shot); but how much money do they have left after taking on all those contracts last year? Will anyone else have any money? The Pacers (I think that might literally break me, to watch Oladipo, Mario, and Turner play well elsewhere)?

Happy Discount Chocolate Eve!

He has the best winning %. His winning % is superb. It's phenomenal. He's a very stable genius, people.

I think it's because there's a difference between bad defensively and not knowing what to do defensively. I've said since his second year, Payton's problem is that he doesn't seem to work as part of the team on defense. He just attacks anything near him and otherwise doesn't know what to do. Augustine, while not particularly good at attacking the ball-handler, doesn't find himself out of position, knows how to handle a screen, and focuses his attention on keeping the ball-handler from the spots on the floor where he'll do the most damage. Jameer was solid with this as well, despite being a small, unimpressive defender. It's the difference between having a Bengal Tiger guarding your home, but he doesn't know to stay near the door, and having a Golden Retriever who sits on the porch and just barks at anything that approaches the door.

It really does happen a lot. A lot of people thought Klay Thompson was a reach where he was drafted; he was a low-ceiling guy who wasn't supposed to be able to keep up defensively and would just be a spot-up shooter. Eric Bledsoe was a 2-guard with not enough handles to play PG and not a good enough passer. Paul George couldn't get his own shots. Kawhi Leonard was too unskilled to play SF. Draymond Green was, hilariously, not considered even a good defender, on top of being too small to play PF. Khris Middleton was too slow. C.J. McCollum was too small to play SG. Rudy Gobert was too skinny and didn't play hard enough. Gary Harris wasn't a good enough ball handler and was too small. Rodney Hood was too skinny to play SF and not quick enough to play SG. Myles Turner ran funny. Devin Booker didn't have a good enough 1st step to get his own shot, and he wasn't 'long' enough. Malcolm Brogdon was slow, couldn't jump. Just how good the late gems in the draft are varies, but there always are some. And often as not there are a couple potential stars there.

Payton would have been a beast in the 90's, back when PGs could get away with not being good shooters, and defense was all 1-on-1. Still might have struggled with that lack of consistent effort, but skill-wise, that was when he should have played.

But you cannot imply from something. This is an understandable mistake, considering the context. ?4thewin was saying that writers were making implications. You flipped it around to discuss the speculation based on those writers. Where you went wrong is that you did not flip from implication to inference. As ?4thewin read opinion pieces on the internet, he was making inferences based on the writers' implications. Let me be clear. To imply is to suggest, while to infer is to deduce, if you will. Think of implication as a QB and inference as a Receiver. You can infer from something, or you can imply something; just as a receiver can receive a ball from a quarterback, but if a quarterback were to receive the ball he would be a receiver. See, you inferred from what I said that I thought a second-round pick would be as good as Payton. That's not what I was implying. I was implying that Payton is not worth keeping around for what we'd have to pay him, but a second-round pick more likely would be. I'm speaking of value for payment, not simply basketball acumen. Of course Payton is better than your average second-round pick. But, considering we have DJ Augustine, Elfrid Payton is probably not worth keeping around for even the qualifying offer we'd have to give him (which, again, someone else would outbid, anyway). So getting a second round pick is good, because the alternative was either overpaying Payton or losing him for nothing. For the record: I didn't mean to be rude with the "grammar lesson." I genuinely was trying to be helpful, as the the nuance between implication and inference is not something someone who isn't a writer (like me) or an English professor would always know. If you were the type of person to consistently misuse words, I would have ignored it, since I gathered from the context what you were trying to say. But since you generally seem to care about clarity in your posts, I thought you might want to know that you were using a word wrong. I sincerely apologize if it seemed I was trying to speak down to you. Grammar is just something I happen to know a lot about, because I have to be conscious of it all the time.

The word you were looking for in that first sentence, second clause, was infer not imply. Also, I think it's just as likely the second rounder turns into something we can at least keep and develop as it is Payton becomes something we regret getting rid of. Unless he becomes a completely different player defensively, he's not worth more than the potential qualifying offer (which doesn't matter, because some team will pay him more than he's worth).

You're asking me to pick who I think will come out of nowhere as a great player after #6 in this draft? That kinda goes against everything I'm talking about, but sure, I can see some candidates: Sexton Miles Bridges Mikal Bridges Obviously I wouldn't assume any one of these guys will be stars. But these three would be my picks of guys to come out of the 7-12 picks as stars. Of course, maybe someone completely different will do it. But it's almost certain someone will.

Sure, we can think that now. But people say that every year, to an extent. This past year was a crazy deep draft for star potential, everyone saying that you could get a potential star in the top 8 or 9. Who's the best rookie of this class so far? Donovan Mitchell, pick #13, who no one thought would be this good. 2009 was the year of Blake Griffin and then no one. Except Steph turned out to be Steph. No one saw that coming. 2010 was the John Wall Sweepstakes year. Except PG was picked 10th. 2012 was AD and no other stars, remember? except Beal and Drummond are great. There weren't supposed to be any stars in 2013. Oladipo, McCollum, and Giannis came out of nowhere.

Looking at the last ten years, it's clear that getting the #1 pick is great. But the #2 pick the last ten years has arguably worse (in terms of getting a star player) than getting #9. # 3 isn't really any better.

Unless Bridges or Knox end up the next PG/McCollum/DeRozan/Hayward/Kemba/Drummond/Steph/Barnes. For the record, if we get th 8th pick we're just cursed... or maybe eight is due, right?

4 of the 10 All-Star starters are not top 3 picks. 10 of the 14 reserves. Something tells me we're better off worrying about player development and asset management than draft position. Not that I want desperately to see us win a bunch of meaningless games at the end of this season. But if the team suddenly starts playing hard every night, and it seems the culture is changing, slipping to 5th or 6th in the draft might be worth it (especially if Young falls, which I've seen a lot of people saying he will). Edit: correction, 11 of 14 reserves. Westbrook was the 4th pick.

You and I agree that the moves we made the 2 years previous to this one (we didn't make any win-now moves this year, we just basically stood pat, which isn't tanking but not trying to win either) have been bad. We just disagree on whether it is the motivation or the execution that is the problem. Your point is that if we'd continued to tank harder we could have ended up with Ben Simmons or Jayson Tatum/Lauri Markanen?, which would put us in better position to win, plus we shouldn't have blown our wad on Biyombo and co. My point is that We had the players to end the tank (Oladipo and Gordon), we just mismanaged those players; the motivation wasn't the problem, it was the execution. Saying ending the tank is why we suck is like blaming Hedo for Lee's missed layup at the end of Game 2 of the 2009 NBA Finals. The opportunity was there for us to end the tank. We failed because Skiles quit and Hennigan orchestrated quite possibly the worst off-season in NBA history (exaggeration, but certainly the worst in Orlando Magic history).

Except your facts are wrong. Unless you think year 3 with Vaughn/Borrego was not tanking.

Probably that 35 wins is the best record we've had post-Dwight.

Of course ***** that guy. Don't for a second think I'm defending his behavior. But there's a wide gulf between '***** that guy' and taking every opportunity to blame our failures as a franchise on his hiring, especially since, from a basketball standpoint, he was far and away our best coach since Stan.

As opposed to the two fantastic coaches Rob hired? Seriously, the desperate need to take shots at Skiles is getting silly.

This is why trading our second pick last year was so stupid. Same goes with not extenbing Mario. If you have assets, especially picks, don't be afraid of them. The draft is a crapshoot. You might get AD from tanking, or you might get Bargnani. You might get Shabazz with a mid-1st pick, or you might get Giannis. You'll probably get Tyler Harvey with your second rounder, but you could get Jokic. They didn't know what they had in Mario. He'd barely played for them. But they were unwilling to take the small hit if he didn't work out. They didn't know what they could get with that pick, and they were unwilling to gamble. But gamblers don't win by only betting on sure things.