The Official 2015-2016 Regular Season Thread

[Ibn Battuta 127]

pretty good, considering Payton isn't garbage, just improvable. There are no sure things in the draft. This wasn't a Reece Gaines pick, it was a MCW pick.

 

Danny Ainge is a great GM who evaluates players really well. The majority of his picks haven't panned out.

 

We know Payton isn't garbage. But is he your starter for a contending team? It's not looking that way. That's what makes you think what they saw in him to trade up to get him.

 

Ainge is a great GM. He won a ring so until he totally trashes that rep he's still a great GM. Rob OTOH...

[O_SteveO 102]

I predicted at the beginning of the season that whether we made the playoffs or not, we would start to get a clearer picture of what we have long term, and that the season would either make or break our players. Imo Gordon, Oladipo, and Fournier have come out ahead of the curve, Vuc and Payton seem more dispensable every day, Mario gets another season or so to put it all together, and the rest we can take or leave (maybe to peruse a FA). Things aren't nearly as bad as they seem.

[Justin Jaudon 221]

I predicted at the beginning of the season that whether we made the playoffs or not, we would start to get a clearer picture of what we have long term, and that the season would either make or break our players. Imo Gordon, Oladipo, and Fournier have come out ahead of the curve, Vuc and Payton seem more dispensable every day, Mario gets another season or so to put it all together, and the rest we can take or leave (maybe to peruse a FA). Things aren't nearly as bad as they seem.

 

This is pretty accurate. We all had hopes of playoffs, but we knew that what we would get was a real assessment of our talent, for the first time in this rebuild. Playoffs would have meant Rob should be given GM of the year consideration, contention that the team was on the right track, and this level just below contention that we are on means that Rob has missed on a few guys that we were counting on. That is not that surprising, really. I'm no Rob apologist. I'm not happy with how Frye or Vaughn turned out, nor with the Payton situation. The Tobias situation was neither brilliant nor stupid - it was a wash, as the contract was disposable. But he made great choices in the Fournier trade, the Oladipo pick, and again, if we decide to make Vuc available, he will be incredibly trade-able because of his contract. Skiles, from what I can see, was the right pick so far as a coach, because he has done what we needed: show us who our real core is right now and develop those guys.

 

My assessment of the franchise right now is that we're still heading in the right direction, just not as fast as everyone would like, because rather than be a genius wonder-kid, Rob has so far shown to be just a really solid young GM. We're looking at, probably, nearly a ten game improvement over last year. We need to win at least one FA this year, though.

[Jay Magic 1,251]

The January meltdown killed our season. Even if we nicked another 2-3 games we'd still be right in the hunt for the 8th spot. Next season I expect and I think we all demand playoffs

[Miller4Prez66 545]

The January meltdown killed our season. Even if we nicked another 2-3 games we'd still be right in the hunt for the 8th spot. Next season I expect and I think we all demand playoffs

 

We should be demanding playoffs. Next year will be season #5 in the post-Dwight rebuild. It shouldn't take this long for the team to show some real improvements. If we can't manage playoffs, I think a major shake up in the front office is in store.

[Jay Magic 1,251]

We should be demanding playoffs. Next year will be season #5 in the post-Dwight rebuild. It shouldn't take this long for the team to show some real improvements. If we can't manage playoffs, I think a major shake up in the front office is in store.

 

I certainly agree.

[God Hates Otis Smith 153]

this team is going nowhere as long as skiles remains coach

the good old magic connection fails again

[Mauro Pedrosa 1,032]

Tony Snell's market value is probably at an all-time low. He'd be a great 3 and D backup swingman

[Jay Magic 1,251]

@WojVertical The NBA and NBPA have agreed to shorten July free agent moratorium to five days -- July 1 to July 6, league sources tell The Vertical.

[Justin Jaudon 221]

I think people need to remember that this hasn't been a normal rebuild. We didn't start from the ground up. We started buried six feet under. We had a star we couldn't trade to more than a couple places, none of which had anyone or anything worth trading for. We had cap issues even without that star's contract. We had literally no one on the roster worth more than a late first rounder. We envy teams like Boston, but they got a million picks and still had an all-star PG on their roster when they started their rebuild. We envy teams like Portland, who just kept going like they lost nothing, but they already had a superstar PG in Lillard. We envy OKC, but they lucked into three HOF caliber players in three consecutive drafts. We remember the post Shaq years still in the playoffs, but we still had Penny. We remember the post-Penny years but we caught lightning in a bottle with T-Mac. We remember the post-T-Mac years, but we had the number one pick and it was a good one.

 

Five years out of the playoffs sucks. There's no getting around that. But I'm not exactly sure why people were expecting much better. This rebuild started in hell, snuggling up to Beelzebub, and we've had no lottery luck to pull us out early this time. We're crawling out of the muck now. It's been dirty, there have been slip-ups. But eating our own by blaming Rob and Skiles (the latter of whom just got here) is absurd.

 

Rob has been a solid GM, having made no ham-stringing moves to reset the rebuild. He's kept flexibility while taking calculated risks, some of which have paid off and others which have not. But he's kept us moving forward.

 

Not one person here can give a legitimate reason for thinking Skiles is bad for this team. I've read all the posts, and they haven't changed since before he was named coach. "He's mean, and players don't like him" (except that's not evident at all, as the only player who has clearly clashed with Skiles has been Elf, a guy to whom he has clearly given every opportunity, who clashed with Vaughn, the most likable guy ever). "He's a mediocre coach" (who is flirting with a ten game improvement in his first season, despite injuries and a conference getting way better ahead of us). "He'll turn away Free Agents" (except there is absolutely no evidence of that). "His rotations have been inconsistent" (because his players have been inconsistent). On the other hand, he has helped to improve all but one player on this team (Yes, even Vuc has improved, look at his defense before this year for comparison). He has held everyone on the team accountable for their effort and focus, and been very consistent with that. He somehow got this team to play great basketball in December, all while managing the psyche of our best two-way player through a benching. He has been both flexible and firm, something that is consistent in every good coach. But he's an easy scapegoat, so people want him fired his first year here.

 

All this is just me saying, "Keep calm... and move on." Next year absolutely should be a playoff year. But people need to realize that Boston is not getting any worse, nor is Detroit, nor Indiana, Nor Charlotte. The East has been rebuilding for years, and now there is a real chance of winning teams missing the playoffs in the East. There are two ways to jump ahead of the race: 1) sign a monster FA - a hard thing for a rebuilding team to do before making the playoffs first; 2) build a perfectly balanced team - a hard thing to do before really understanding what we have, a problem Skiles has helped alleviate. So if Rob decides to sign a big FA to be our anchor, great. It better work. But I'm not throwing him to the wolves if no one wants to sign here yet. The answer then is to either go for option 2 above or sign short term guys to get us into the playoffs and try to get another big FA next year.

 

The panic and the bluster on this site is unbecoming a group of actually pretty knowledgeable basketball fans.

[Murphy13 185]

I'm not disagreeing with everything you said, but in reality this has been a bad rebuild. Not the worst, but still bad. 5 years is long enough regardless of where the rebuild began. 5 years is long enough to have a complete recycling of contenders. Miami went from champs to bad back to the 3 seed. Dallas went from champs to middling to good to middling. GS went from nobodies to the best team ever. Charlotte went from bad to mediocre to bad to pretty darn good. You get the point. 5 years in, we should be at the very least in contention for the playoffs. Bad rebuild.

[HeHateMe 697]

I'm not disagreeing with everything you said, but in reality this has been a bad rebuild. Not the worst, but still bad. 5 years is long enough regardless of where the rebuild began. 5 years is long enough to have a complete recycling of contenders. Miami went from champs to bad back to the 3 seed. Dallas went from champs to middling to good to middling. GS went from nobodies to the best team ever. Charlotte went from bad to mediocre to bad to pretty darn good. You get the point. 5 years in, we should be at the very least in contention for the playoffs. Bad rebuild.

 

I would just like to have less question marks about the roster. Like I said earlier, we have more question marks now then we did a year ago. Ideally, it would have been nice to feel like we predominately had our roster set by this time which we do not. A year ago we thought all we needed was a PF.

 

Now, a year later, we have a PG who looks like a backup and a center who really can't defend at all. We think we have something with Dipo/Fournier/AG, but outside of that we're filled with question marks. Gordon is still super young and raw, Mario showed little this year (not saying this like a big negative, I'll worry about Mario if he doesn't progress next year which I think he'll be fine), and we traded Harris.

 

Was it a failed rebuild? I think that's tough to answer and I don't think you can until free agency is over this summer. It's for sure not gone all according to plan and some players haven't worked out the way we would have hoped but I'm giving it till next year before I completely pass judgement.

 

I already didn't renew my season tickets this year so I have no financial loss in any of this. It was funny, at the beginning of the year I was like "damn, should have renewed" than as the season went on I was like "Nevermind, Magic gonna Magic". Not to say we have to win for the tickets to be worth it, but when you fork over your hard earned cash and were down 20 at half and the arena is filled with opposing teams fans mocking us, it's just not fun.