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2020-2021 Official Magic Season Thread

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5 minutes ago, JJZFL said:

I certainly agree about the last sentence.  I also understand the logic behind the argument that you’re making.  Robbins points about tanking are the same ones I’ve made on this board for the past 10 years or so.  
 

While I agree with your conclusions in the abstract, my concern is that I don’t believe it’s as easy to turn tanking on and off as this assumes.  I think that once you implicitly tell your players that we’re not trying to win, that attitude becomes very hard to reverse.  A small part of them going forward always feels that everything is fine no matter what happens, because if we’re not winning we’re tanking.  This is especially true for young players.  And so I’m afraid that the decision to tank now will stick around and affect our play in the future, even though we want to “turn it off”.  
 

I freely acknowledge that this could be overstated and that maybe we can get away with it for the next ten games without it carrying over.  From my standpoint, the risk is too high but I completely understand that mine is a minority opinion.   As always time will tell.  

I don't know that we even need to try "tanking" - our rotations and lineups are all out of whack with players being out/injured, new guys coming in and limited practice. We have a lot of young guys still making young guy mistakes - but Clifford/Ty are letting them play through it a lot more right now, partly because there aren't many other options, with Ross, Carter-Williams, Porter, and (until the other night) Ennis being out. I think Ennis will be under a minutes restriction for a few more games, and I expect that if Chuma and Wendell play, they will also get a few less minutes to aid recovery. I think we will see quite a bit more of Donta Hall, Mo Wagner, Gary Harris and RJ Hampton; as we are still evaluating them. I love seeing our guys play hard and trying to win, my biggest concern isn't so much them developing bad habits, as it is them losing heart. It's a fine line, and one we've had difficulty with before. 

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JJZFL, I feel you, but we're not talking about 5 consecutive years of tanking.. has been just a season like that... the Warriors "tanked" too last season because they had no other option.

I'm pretty sure that the management doesn't want another long period of tanking, that the FO never persecuted that route, and that coach Clifford is not the one for that... he's actually the opposite, as he showed recently. ;) I don't think that any of our players has already a losing culture or will take it for a couple of months, in which we're not even blatantly tanking.

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Yea Clifford will go insane if he has to coach another 2+ years of young guys missing rotations on defense and making dumb decisions on offense. 

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6 minutes ago, CTMagicUK said:

Yea Clifford will go insane if he has to coach another 2+ years of young guys missing rotations on defense and making dumb decisions on offense. 

He's definitely going to be seeing that unless there are some wholesale changes to our roster. Assuming we get both ours and Chicago's picks, then next years roster will have at least:

2 rookies (maybe 3 w/our 2nd round pick)

3 second-year players (Anthony, Okeke, Hampton)

2 fourth-year players (Carter, Bamba)

2 fifth-year players (Isaac, Fultz)

And a number of them have missed significant amounts of playing time due to injuries, so are less game experienced than other guys in their draft class. That is 9 (or 10) of your 15 regular roster spots right there. 

I actually think Clifford is a pretty good developmental coach, as he does tend to hold guys accountable - but he probably will have to be more patient with missed rotations and dumb decisions than he is accustomed to in the short term. 

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Interesting debate and I don’t want to quote everybody, but my personal opinion is what happens at coach this summer is a pretty big tell of what the intentions are going forward. If we’re in for a long haul rebuild, we will probably mutually part ways with Clifford and hire a young coach to grow with a young team, if he stays or we extend him, then the trades were likely about gathering assets to make a huge trade than using and developing all the young picks and talent. Taking on Harris’ $20 million deal that expires next year will help match salary if that’s a direction we choose to go.

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I agree with the comment that we don't need to tank. The available players we have right now don't have enough talent to win many games, hopefully none. They sure are fun to watch though! Next season we'll have Isaac back until he gets injured again as well as Fultz. If we do well in the draft I see us getting back to 8th seed if we stay healthy.

 

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2 minutes ago, ROCK LEGENDS PHOTOGRAPHERS said:

I agree with the comment that we don't need to tank. The available players we have right now don't have enough talent to win many games, hopefully none. They sure are fun to watch though! Next season we'll have Isaac back until he gets injured again as well as Fultz. If we do well in the draft I see us getting back to 8th seed if we stay healthy.

 

Good points.  I share your hopes but also concerns regarding Isaac and Fultz.  Can they stay healthy, and, even if they do, can they reach their potential given all the injuries?  
 

Also, shooting is potentially a problem depending on who we surround them with. 

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59 minutes ago, JJZFL said:

Good points.  I share your hopes but also concerns regarding Isaac and Fultz.  Can they stay healthy, and, even if they do, can they reach their potential given all the injuries?  
 

Also, shooting is potentially a problem depending on who we surround them with. 

Both of those concerns are completely fair. More than fair actually. We'll see.

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  Great posts. It's too early too see where we are actually going. So many things are going to happen before next season. Since the season will end long before the lottery, Cliff will get the most press. I suspect they will resolve that quickly, is he in or out? My guess is he's out.

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Okay y'all. It's almost that time. Game Thread Starter for Grizzlies vs Magic has been posted. And. . .

 GZ5a85.png >>>  v8GTQQ.png             xvti27.pngCome on in and join us soon.  :)

 

Hahaha. . .I know some of you think I've lost my mind.     KvUm8B.png

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