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Bauncey Chillups

2019 Offseason Thread

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23 minutes ago, Natesroom said:

Where did you hear this? i didnt see it on any twitter feeds, or my regular news feeds... I'd like to add to my list whatever place you heard it from.

On other sightings I saw Jonathan Isaac at Keke's Restaurant a few Saturdays ago... i didnt want to bother him so i just said something about big fan of yours and keep posting his uplifting comments on twitter.

It was mentioned in the latest Denton article in passing.

Most of those articles have no real information. This is just an odd one where he was talking to Skiles who said we had optional workouts and everyone showed up with the exception of the guys playing in fiba

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32 minutes ago, ?4thewin said:

It was mentioned in the latest Denton article in passing.

Most of those articles have no real information. This is just an odd one where he was talking to Skiles who said we had optional workouts and everyone showed up with the exception of the guys playing in fiba

Skiles?

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From years one through four, Gordon had a steady season-over-season increase in usage rate, peaking at nearly 25 percent in 2017-18. Rising usage was most clearly borne out in his 2017-18 shot attempts (~38 percent increase over his previous career-high), free throw attempts (44 percent increase) and turnovers (63 percent increase over career-high – from 1.1 per game to 1.8). By contrast, assists (21 percent over career-high) showed just a moderate growth. Gordon was becoming more of a focal point without marked change in efficiency — he produced more because of opportunity.

In 2018-19, under new coach Steve Clifford, with a usage rate dipping below 22 percent, Gordon set career-highs in assists-per-game and assist percentage (16.6 percent). He threw less passes, but per NBA Stats, generated more assists, more potential assists, and more points off passes. He played more minutes and took fewer shots but saw improvements in effective field goal percentage and true shooting. Gordon, as a fifth-year player, started to do more with less and this shift coincided with Orlando’s first playoff appearance in his career which isn’t to suggest causation, but rather to acknowledge how a shift in his usage and play contributed to greater team success. This can also be suggested by his improved wins added per ESPN’s RPM data which shows 4.81 wins in 2017-18 compared to 6.52 last season.

As I looked back through Gordon’s tape, it wasn’t just a simple scheme change leading to easy pass/playmaking options. His assists came off reads: kick-outs, spotting cutters, pinpoint pocket passes to Nikola Vucevic, lobs off live dribbles, wraparounds, full-court transition dimes to streaking Evan Fournier — just a variety and range of passes thrown with a consistency that wasn’t previously accessible.

https://fansided.com/2019/09/16/25-under-25-2019-aaron-gordon-magic-21/

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18 hours ago, The Neighborhood Bully said:

It's surprising to see that Gordan is only 24. It seems like he has been around forever. The article has an interesting take on Gordon's ceiling in that it isn't going to be as high as we all once hoped. That reality of that hit me in the face like a brick. I had always hoped that Gordon would be one of those that would have a breakout season. I still love the guy though. He's a gym rat, has a great attitude, is athletic as hell, and has one heck of a work ethic. I think Clifford is doing wonders with him and utilizing him in the right way. His 3 point shot has improved and his athleticism allows him to take advantage of unplanned opportunities. Even though he isn't our go-to guy, I see him as our glue guy, and IMO every team needs players like that.

What about you? Are you happy Gordon is on our team, or is he someone you would trade away, if we could, for a more consistent/ productive scorer? 

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5 minutes ago, Just a regular Magic fan said:

It's surprising to see that Gordan is only 24. It seems like he has been around forever. The article has an interesting take on Gordon's ceiling in that it isn't going to be as high as we all once hoped. That reality of that hit me in the face like a brick. I had always hoped that Gordon would be one of those that would have a breakout season. I still love the guy though. He's a gym rat, has a great attitude, is athletic as hell, and has one heck of a work ethic. I think Clifford is doing wonders with him and utilizing him in the right way. His 3 point shot has improved and his athleticism allows him to take advantage of unplanned opportunities. Even though he isn't our go-to guy, I see him as our glue guy, and IMO every team needs players like that.

What about you? Are you happy Gordon is on our team, or is he someone you would trade away, if we could, for a more consistent/ productive scorer? 

I wouldn't read too much into Gordon analysis. Just in the last month:

We've had Simmons and Lowe say he's one of the most likely guys to make a leap into stardom later in his career.

We've had this guy discuss him more in terms of his floor because of his great passing ability but doubts his ability to reach stardom.

We had Kevin O'Connor talk about how Gordon is someone who  could become a star because of consistent incremental improvement every year but "isn't the passer he expected he would be out of college". 

 

So there's a lot of mixed analysis here. There are signs he could take a leap. There are deficiencies in his game that he might not be able to improve which would keep him where he is as just a good player. 

This playoff run and Gordon's performance during it made him someone people must now have opinions about. But I don't think we're good at analysing ceiling for guys like Gordon who go from where he was as a rookie to where he is now. Similar situation with Jimmy Butler who went from being basically Ronnie Brewer to a franchise player. Those guys are harder to project than a guy like Paul George who had the talent from day one but coasted through much of his amateur days so there was a question about whether he'd work to reach his potential

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1 hour ago, Just a regular Magic fan said:

It's surprising to see that Gordan is only 24. It seems like he has been around forever. The article has an interesting take on Gordon's ceiling in that it isn't going to be as high as we all once hoped. That reality of that hit me in the face like a brick. I had always hoped that Gordon would be one of those that would have a breakout season. I still love the guy though. He's a gym rat, has a great attitude, is athletic as hell, and has one heck of a work ethic. I think Clifford is doing wonders with him and utilizing him in the right way. His 3 point shot has improved and his athleticism allows him to take advantage of unplanned opportunities. Even though he isn't our go-to guy, I see him as our glue guy, and IMO every team needs players like that.

What about you? Are you happy Gordon is on our team, or is he someone you would trade away, if we could, for a more consistent/ productive scorer? 

Being a hard worker is very underrated, and AG has made improvements to his game every year. I've always wanted to build around Fultz + BIG and that hasn't changed

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I think the blurb under his 60th ranking in the SI top 100 NBA players kinda gets at what I'm talking about. 

https://www.si.com/nba/top-100-nba-players-2020#80-61

He's kind of been in a weird situation consistently in his career. Comes into a situation with Harris, oladipo, and Vucevic being the main offensive cogs and Fournier and Payton getting a lot of on ball responsibility so he's left being the hustle guy. Then we transition from that team to the ibaka team where we played almost exclusively in Ibaka-vuc or Ibaka-biyombo lineups until the trade and it's an awkward fit because he can't shoot yet and Ibaka isn't a forward. 

Then everyone gets hurt and he starts getting a lot more offensive responsibility (even before the injuries) and he flashes some but he also looks really awkward a lot of the time and inexplicably decides to start shooting pull up threes in transition. 

Then Clifford comes in and Gordon is a bit wild with the ball early in the season pushing Clifford to run the offense through Vucevic and Fournier cutting his usage. But then that ends up being a great thing for Gordon because he starts to build a more efficient offensive game that he can build off of. He grabs that role as a facilitator a couple months into the season and averages 4.2 apg over the last something like 40 games. That's really good for a forward. It's not Draymond but it is Justise Winslow, Donovan Mitchell, Jimmy Butler. 

So he starts flashing these skills in spots (and the spots are limited because we have depth and are trying to win) where he shows legit number 1 option scoring (only 36 players have multiple 40 point games over the past 3 seasons), legitimate facilitation from the wing, elite speed with the ball in transition, a great first step, ability to bully his way to the rim, and months where he shoots 38%+ from 3. 

But on the flip side he seemingly has weeks where he doesn't attack the rim off the dribble with the exception of open lanes to the basket and focuses on dribbling into post fades. He has days where it's almost like he decides he wants to try moves he was working on before the game starts instead of just playing. He has months where he shoots less than 30.5% from 3. The elite speed with the ball we saw 5 times I can remember so probably less than a dozen times during the season. He doesn't use his quick step effectively often enough. 

With a bit more refinement and a bigger role here could easily be an all star in the east. He wouldn't be considerably different than Khris Middleton or Paul Millsap. It's not that big of a leap. Look at Vucevic. 

The real leap to being a star is possible. The signs are there. His growth rate and work ethic don't disqualify him from that leap. He has all of the little signifiers that this is possible.

But at the same time how likely is it that he actually accomplishes that? How many players incrementally improve into "star" players? What is the benchmark for being a star? Is a more palatable Josh Smith a star? 

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