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Fultz4thewin

2017-2018 Official Season Discussion Thread

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10 hours ago, Miller4Prez66 said:


Tanking is so overrated. None of the best teams in the league right now tanked for their best players. All the tanking strategy has done for us is waste 6 years of our short lives on bad basketball and set up the darkest age in the history of this franchise. With this season already a lost cause I'm fine with tanking to finish, but I don't want to hear anymore of it going forward. Life is way too short to throw away YEARS for the possibility of getting a star who might lead you to a championship. Plus, even if we do get one that doesn't guarantee diddly either. Not like the Pelicans have won big with Anthony Davis and I think the dude is a top 5 player in the NBA.

Actually us being terrible at tanking is why we are where we are today.

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34 minutes ago, ?4thewin said:

 hopefully now that Payton is gone we'll see some improvement on the defensive end

100% agree with what you say  and further it isbacked up by an article I read earlier this year about the weakness of the Magic's defense.  The article identified Vuc as a weak defender (no revelation) but said it could be overcome except the the real breakdown was Payton.  Author said it was because either Payton was a poor defender OR he refused to follow the coach's plan.  Either way Payton was the weak link.  Therefore we will have to improve!!!

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3 minutes ago, magicblue said:

Actually us being terrible at tanking is why we are where we are today.

No. Us being terrible at money and asset management, and not being great at drafting is why we are where we are today. Imagine for a moment we're building around Oladipo and Gordon right now, with Sabonis as a nice bench asset. Imagine we didn't give up two 1sts and a 2nd for Elfrid Payton. Imagine we didn't pay Bismack Biyombo all the money in the world. Imagine we traded Vucevic two years ago when he was still an asset people would give something for. Ditto for Evan Fournier. Imagine if, instead of Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja, we had drafted any one of Jusuf Nurkic, Gary Harris, Rodney Hood, Clint Capela, Willie Cauley-Stein, Myles Turner, or Kelly Oubre; any of those guys would have been somewhat reasonable picks for us, drafted within the next ten picks and would not have been considered major reaches.

 

Would we be competing for a championship this year? Not likely. But we'd be a playoff team, young, with lots of assets to get better, and not drowning in bad contracts. We were fine at tanking. We had 3 picks in the top 5. Two have turned into really good players, one an All-Star. Unfortunately, we got rid of the All-Star for Terrence Ross, we botched the 3rd top 5 pick, and we spent all our excess money on garbage.

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49 minutes ago, Mike1989 said:

But does our offense scare anyone? Not really.

How often does our offense break teams? 

It is good to see our offense has improved to being middle of the pack, but we are still a flawed team on that end of the court and it does need to continue to get better. My argument for our next draft is to make sure we don't keep adding guys that can't shoot or project to be scorers because have spent long enough drafting players based on defensive ability and upside. We did the same by adding Isaac. It was a move based purely on the guy's length and defensive potential. Some of his clear flaws in college came on the offensive end and one of the main concerns about him was that he projects to be more of a third or fourth option on a good team. Payton coming out of college was flawed on the offensive end. We can't really afford to keep drafting guys that are flawed on the offensive end, can't shoot, and don't project to be potential go to scorers because that approach hasn't worked. We need to make sure that the players we bring in can help boost our offense and make it more consistent and threatening, because I would argue that a top ten offense with a middle of the pack defense is more effective in the modern era than a top ten defense and a middle of the pack offense. 

I don't think we need to worry about shooting anymore. Half of these games we've won recently have come from us raining down threes. I worry more about the defense. I don't think our offense is going to get much better until we can find a guy who can consistently create his own shot

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17 minutes ago, magicblue said:

Actually us being terrible at tanking is why we are where we are today.

Exactly!  The draft is only one way to build a team, not the only way.  Patience (anybody want Oladipo back, wish we would have extened Hezonja?), along with the development, of your players another component.  Smart decisions, the reverse of what we are most familiar with, with trades, free agency, etc will always help.  And , good luck, will also help.  I hate tanking and it is not always the solution.  But being smart in a long range plan is a solution.  So putting yourself in a position to make your team better (I assume this is the long range plan) should be the plan.  Being one to the top 3 teams in this year's draft would give you the best chance to help your plan. No win this year will help us be a better team in the future.  Because there is, on paper, only ONE GREAT point guard out there, Trrae Young, one who is averaging 29 points per game, can pass, can already shoot NBA 3's, etc.  I would want to be in the position to take that player not hope we can get that player, if that is the choice.  Being in the top 3 for the last 3 years has been beneficial for all teams involved.  Also Philly and Cliipers have a 2nd first round pick in the middle of the first round.  Go get one of those with a trade (15-18 range) and hope you can get Bates-Diop  (anoither scorer, defender).  Give me those two and go from there!!

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12 minutes ago, Justin Jaudon said:

No. Us being terrible at money and asset management, and not being great at drafting is why we are where we are today. Imagine for a moment we're building around Oladipo and Gordon right now, with Sabonis as a nice bench asset. Imagine we didn't give up two 1sts and a 2nd for Elfrid Payton. Imagine we didn't pay Bismack Biyombo all the money in the world. Imagine we traded Vucevic two years ago when he was still an asset people would give something for. Ditto for Evan Fournier. Imagine if, instead of Elfrid Payton and Mario Hezonja, we had drafted any one of Jusuf Nurkic, Gary Harris, Rodney Hood, Clint Capela, Willie Cauley-Stein, Myles Turner, or Kelly Oubre; any of those guys would have been somewhat reasonable picks for us, drafted within the next ten picks and would not have been considered major reaches.

 

Would we be competing for a championship this year? Not likely. But we'd be a playoff team, young, with lots of assets to get better, and not drowning in bad contracts. We were fine at tanking. We had 3 picks in the top 5. Two have turned into really good players, one an All-Star. Unfortunately, we got rid of the All-Star for Terrence Ross, we botched the 3rd top 5 pick, and we spent all our excess money on garbage.

 

How does nurkic, hood, wcs, or oubre make us better?

I mean Fournier is better than or equal to hood. Wcs hasnt been good.  Nurkic is fine but wouldn't really fit any better than the guys we have now.  And Gary Harris doesn't really make sense with oladipo.  

Turner would be nice though.  But is turner really changing the fortunes of this franchise? 

I think Mario and oubre are about even now 

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53 minutes ago, magicblue said:

Actually us being terrible at tanking is why we are where we are today.

The reverse is true. Tanking is a high risk strategy, hoping you’ll get that great player to turn around the terrible situation you build so that you’ll have a bad record.  Analogous to swinging for the fences or the Hail Mary pass, it can work and give great results but it fails far more often.  It’s the reason, as someone else noted recently, that we’ve experienced the worst 6 years by far in franchise history, with no clear end in sight.  It’s the reason Hennigan was a disaster despite the never ending excuses that a few on this board continue to make for him. 

The decision to tank is the main reason we are where we are today. For those who continue to embrace this strategy despite its obvious failure, you should not complain when we’re terrible year after year because we fail to draft a future HoF player. Those players don’t come around that often. 

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I don't think "we shouldn't have drafted Mario" takes really work anymore now that we have a 27 game sample of 12 ppg 4 rpg low turnovers 47/36/80 shooting in a 6th man role.  

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1 minute ago, JJZFL said:

The reverse is true. Tanking is a high risk strategy, hoping you’ll get that great player to turn around the terrible situation you build so that you’ll have a bad record.  Analogous to swinging for the fences or the Hail Mary pass, it can work and give great results but it fails far more often.  It’s the reason, as someone else noted recently, that we’ve experienced the worst 6 years by far in franchise history, with no clear end in sight.  It’s the reason Hennigan was a disaster despite the never ending excuses that a few on this board continue to make for him. 

I think tanking works if you go all in on it. 

I don't think you can tank and develop and build simultaneously

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31 minutes ago, JJZFL said:

The reverse is true. Tanking is a high risk strategy, hoping you’ll get that great player to turn around the terrible situation you build so that you’ll have a bad record.  Analogous to swinging for the fences or the Hail Mary pass, it can work and give great results but it fails far more often.  It’s the reason, as someone else noted recently, that we’ve experienced the worst 6 years by far in franchise history, with no clear end in sight.  It’s the reason Hennigan was a disaster despite the never ending excuses that a few on this board continue to make for him. 

The decision to tank is the main reason we are where we are today. For those who continue to embrace this strategy despite its obvious failure, you should not complain when we’re terrible year after year because we fail to draft a future HoF player. Those players don’t come around that often. 

I disagree completely. The decision not to go all in on the tank is why we are where we are. We've had one top three draft pick in the past 5 drafts and have missed out on numerous players (KP, Embiid, Tatum) just to name a few. Our reluctance to fully embrace the tank is why we sit in limbo today, and what was the payoff? About 10-15 meaningless wins combined over those 5 seasons?

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2 hours ago, ?4thewin said:

 hopefully now that Payton is gone we'll see some improvement on the defensive end

I mean we still have a small, journeyman point guard starting :)

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