TreyMachine

Franz and Moe playing some great basketball against the NBA's best. We really have a special duo in them.

Full game highlight can be found here:

Pat is the biggest reason why Orlando has a major sports team. His zeal to bring a team here willed it into existence, not to mention his unmatched lottery luck brought us from nonexistence to relevance and the NBA Finals each decade for the first two decades. He was a good man and no one has anything but positive things to say about him which is all you have to know. RIP Pat Williams.

Looks like the team is becoming complacent. Would just for once like to win a Summer League Championship, even if I know it's completely meaningless.

I think Markelle is a great player and a good person. He makes the players around him better and will thrive somewhere else. My hope is that he gets a payday or a chance to shine as a potential starter - neither of which we could give here. My gut tells me he goes and joins a big-market contender (like LA or Philly) and gets notable minutes on a bunch of nationally televised games to get a payday next year. I at least hope that for him. Good kid and too talented to not do something for at least some more time in the NBA.

I still will never understand the infatuation with RJ Hampton. I get that he was long and athletic, but he was (and continued to be) and VERY bad decision maker and we traded for him, which means we were VERY high on him compared to where he was drafted. Maybe our thought was that if he was able to understand the game, he had a higher ceiling than anyone else there (common WeltHam move), but I just never saw it.

You know what’s crazier than us trading for Markelle Fultz for what everyone considered to be relatively cheap? The pick we traded away - a late playoff pick at the time from OKC (21) - became Tyrese Maxey. Just found that out. Ugh. Lol

Markelle Fultz was the consensus #1 pick. Elite explosive first step, great handles, very good jump shot, and really good vision/passing. Literally the guy just needed to add a 3 pt jumper and he would have been an All-Star had he just kept to the status quo. The issue was his confidence and jump shot both regressed, and as we saw, he essentially had then a ceiling of Elfrid Payton. A player like that becomes an all-star 60% of the time and a talented starter another 30% of the time. He was the small % that didn’t make it. You take that bet each time if the draft happens again with the same information.

I'm in sales and that's why when you go to the table you know EVERYTHING about the competition who is trying to win over your client and how they've probably pitched. If Doc says, "Hey - we never have, and it's not normal, but I'm happy to run it up the chain if it's important to you." The "I don't know let me get back to you" response would have given leadership time to think about it as Tim Duncan was seen as a generational player. Honestly, for TD's legacy, I'm happy he stayed with Pop. But as a Magic fan, I'm obviously devastated. Here's a real question: Do you trade maybe 4 years (before it implodes with Doc as coach) of TMac/Duncan/Hurt Grant Hill (remember he played almost none of 2000 and 2001) and a bunch of scrubs at the vet minimum b/c we'd have no other cap space from 2000-2004 (height of Lakers/Nets years) for our 2006-2010 run with D12/Turk/Lewis/Nelson (we never get Dwight Howard if we're not horribly bad in 2003)? We all know that we didn't end up with a championship but man were those good times.

Thanks for creating the thread and bringing awareness to our game today that I didn't know about. Looking forward to watching and seeing Anthony Black take the Summer League MVP!

I’d love to know how hard we actually went for Hartenstein based on the metrics, I would assume we would have been more aggressive unless we liked our guys a lot more than we anticipated.

A few things to note as I catch up: - Cole continues to be the hype man of this team. He’s always positive, in the middle of the group laughing, and seems to be a huge encourager. For a young team, that is one of the most important things you can have to keep a team together. I don’t see Cole going anywhere because his locker room presence would be so sorely missed more than his contract and on court play would indicate. - Chuma I don’t think has much of a market in the NBA. I could see us giving him a two-way contract as insurance or maybe he goes to Europe. His brother is a residential broker with Keller Williams and for the past 5~ seasons had been the defacto real estate agent for everyone on the team (and others) in the market. I think Chuma would want to continue to be rooted here all other things considered. - Joe Ingles I think does want to be in Orlando long term with his family (as he indicated he wanted). His kids are elementary/pre-school and from what I understand they prefer the warm weather. They bought a nice house here and overpaid for it to be in the location. My gut says Minnesota offered so much more than the Magic were willing to give (if anything at all) and so the family will stay in Orlando while Joe plays and works in Minnesota for one year and then he’ll move back. That’s my gut based on everything I know here locally.

ESPN claimed us a Winner of Free Agency so far https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/40485013/nba-free-agency-2024-early-winners-sixers-thunder-losers-lakers-clippers

Wasn’t that the Carlos Boozer fiasco? They agreed to an extension but then he got offered more money after the verbal and went with them instead?

I told you all we should have gotten CP3 as a placeholder PG and mentor to others in our locker room but EVERYONE chewed me out for it lol…