All Eyes On Me

This is very true, and unfortunately winning doesn’t even fix it. The Rays, the Bucs and the Lightning are are central Florida championship caliber teams and there’s still games in their house where they stand no chance if it’s against a transplant city fanbase. You’re also right that the fact we haven’t had anything legitimate to cheer for in over a decade makes it worse.

My one good thing from tonight: Cole freaking Anthony! 16 REBOUNDS! From your starting point guard! And we needed everyone. Great effort by Cole across the board tonight.

The closeouts were definitely better, but we got destroyed on the glass. It’s nice to win!

Media Day has come and gone, there’s officially video of Magic players shooting around in Amway, the new league year is officially (finally!) underway! Preseason opener is in 6 days against Boston.

Yeah, GH was a Nugget. He’s still super young for how long it feels like he’s been in the league, but he can’t stay healthy and hasn’t been able to for years. His biggest appeal to us is a $20 million expiring contract.

I’d really love to know what’s actually wrong with Chuma.

I bet he was. Especially when you add in how thin we are at forward compared to guard.

One troubling thing that is pretty evident by the eye test and backed pretty heavily by advanced stats: Terrence Ross is really playing like he doesn’t want to be here. No effort on either side of the ball. On a team this young, it’s critical that the few vets we have set an example. If this continues for Ross he needs to be moved.

Julius Randle is a *****

Knicks shooting 43% from 3 against us, Spurs shot 42% from 3 against us the other night. Every shot seems wide open

Oh and to make up for not doing it last game. Good thing from the loss to the Spurs: it’s a good thing Steve Clifford quit, this team probably would’ve already killed him.

I’m gonna try something to help me get through the season. I’m going to say one optimistic thing about every game. Tonight’s thing: Franz looks like he’s gonna be an NBA player

13-41 from the field 7-20 from beyond the arc (which isn’t horrible) 10 turnovers Not a good half

Might be time to start the 2022 draft thread… it’s gonna be a long year

Yeah, it’s terrible everywhere. I pay for league pass and espn+ so I have full access to all NBA and all NHL except for the Nuggets and Avalanche that play 10 minutes from my house. Infuriating. Also have YouTube TV which of course the regional broadcaster won’t sign on with because they are terrified of cord cutting. Seems like the only way to cord cut and get regional teams is “Directv Stream” which hardly count as cord cutting, but it’ll at least allow you to watch the games. At least those are the legal options.. as a mod, I probably shouldn’t mention the illegal ones… lol

Sounds like all the guys that missed game 1 our still out tonight (seriously, why do we even bother paying a training staff when a 23 year old misses a month with a bruise), so still way too many weird lineups and too much Iggy to predict a win. I do expect us to be much better on our home floor in general this year though, young teams usually are. Also wouldn’t put it past Fournier to score 40 tonight

Definitely. Also we should look a lot better as Chuma, Kelle and JI get worked back in. I’d just rather start with Suggs learning how to be an NBA PG now instead of playing him off ball and having Cole run the offense.

Absolute best case scenario for Cole is Fred VanVleet, but he’s got a long way to go to get there. He’s an undersized off-ball 2, he doesn’t have the ball handling or vision to be a 1 in the NBA, we’ll see if he gets there, but asking him to run the offense, especially with this supporting cast right now, is disastrous

I’d go further and say Markelle is currently the only PG on the team.

Big chance after the hot start was when the Spurs started full court press and switching everything on defense, we couldn’t handle it. We had 14 FGA with under 4 seconds on the shot clock. We need Markelle back bad

I don’t think it’ll work long term or as a core lineup, but it seems like it could work in spurts if we have to. I couldn’t agree more about your comment that Bamba is killing us by still not being able to take advantage when he gets the other teams point guard switched on to him. Just seeing Wendell only played 19 minutes tonight?! That’s strange

I think we can safely put to bed any of the talk that Markelle Fultz isn’t tiers above Jalen Suggs, Cole Anthony and RJ Hampton. Cole especially didn’t look like an NBA player tonight. Good games from Mo, WCJ and Franz. It’s gonna be a long year y’all

No extension for Bamba which doesn’t surprise me, no extension for Ayton which kind of does. 4 year $65 million for Kevin Huerter lol

That’s a super affordable deal. Wow. Probably not the greatest sign for Mo, but we shall see

I don’t see any harm in optimism. The great thing about playing hard is it’s affective and contagious, regardless of who you’re playing against. Especially from a guy like Mo Bamba who’s motor has been questioned constantly. We can’t criticize his motor and then when we finally see him play hard blow it off because it’s not a situation we feel is important enough to matter. If anything it’s more impressive, like if the guys are playing this hard when the games don’t matter, I can’t imagine they’ll try any less when the games do.