OFFICIAL GAME THREAD - Magic @ Pelicans - April 1st, 2021

[TreyMachine]

2 minutes ago, hootie249 said:

  Great posts guys. Going by some info i read over on Our SB fansite, we are playing better defense. The turnovers are the biggest thing. Also we are still getting killed on 3 pointers but have dominated in 2 point field goals and bench scoring. Not going to look up the in the paint numbers but i can only assume it's all the minutes spread out. No more Vucevic and Gordon dominating 70 of those 96 minutes. Instead it's a nice combo of WCJ,Birch,Bamba,Chuma and Porter.

I've really enjoyed letting the young guys gain confidence and have the room to find themselves in these games. WCJ you can tell is enjoying the reset of expectations, similar to Fultz. 

This future starting line-up is looking incredibly good - especially defensively:

WCJ (21)
JI (23)
Chuma (22)
RJ (20) / (or another rookie)
Fultz (22)

We just need the offensive games to come around or to bring in a game-changing scorer via FA / Draft. 

[Albert Lergier]

11 hours ago, Forumreader said:

Bec rj can’t ball like we thought he can

RJ is a young Penny !!!  With his speed, a lot of steals and dimes in the near future. 

[TrueMagicFan07]

6 hours ago, crisby pancakes said:

We're not finishing with a top 3 worst record, Houston and Minnesota have been tanking all year, they lose their picks if they don't. Detroit are just a straight up bad team. You also don't bench vets for no reason, that's how you end up with a very bad rep in the league and unable to sign anyone.

The lottery changes mean its not that important to be top 3 anymore. As long as you have a top 8 lottery seeding you have a great chance of moving up. Just enjoy the past 2 wins. They were against two banged up teams missing their best players. We also shot 10/42 from 3 over those 2 games (23.8%) We won't win many more shooting like that. We just need to get a memo out telling teams to stop 'resting' all their players against us! We'll be bottom 6 at season end.

This. The young guys who have potential might lose confidence. Losing might have the same effect on them that it had on Gordon. They might start to display poor body language regretting having to come play in Orlando, and have hopes and dreams of playing elsewhere.  We would end up with a bad rep and unable to sign an allstar or top tier player in the league.

I believe we already have 2 or more "diamonds in the rough".

Edit: Look at the Warriors. They have key vet players that are injury prone. Steph is, what, 33. They fell to the bottom in their conference last year and started out slow this season with below average role players.

But the Warriors did not decide to tank. They have not given up on the below average role players and have worked with them with the mentoring help of Draymond and Steph. They are now in position to make the playoffs.

[JJZFL]

6 hours ago, Mike1989 said:

Tanking doesn’t guarantee we’ll get better lottery odds. The first four teams have a near 50-50 chance of landing inside the top four or picking outside the top four. In fact the team that finishes with the worst record has a greater chance of picking fifth than they do picking 1-4, the teams with the second and third worst record have better odds of picking fifth or sixth, and the team with the fourth worst record has better odds of picking sixth or seventh. So tanking doesn’t guarantee a better pick due to the revamped lottery odds.

For me, we would be better off letting this team continue to develop and build a positive and hardworking culture. The teams that spend the least amount of time rebuilding have a combination of finding a star (or stars) AND build the culture for success. Those teams that get stars but fail to build the culture never go anywhere (eg T-Wolves). We need to promote this play hard culture and not sit players to let the losses build up because doing so would send the wrong message and be counterproductive. 

Great post!