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2021 Official NBA Draft Day Thread (Let's Go!!!)

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17 hours ago, A Better DJ & Photographer said:

And this result, for all you naysayers, is WHY we tank! 
We turned Vuc into Wagner, WCJ, and another future 1st to be determined. Even though the ping pong balls didn't bounce our way to give us 3rd pick (Mobley), the consolation prize of Suggs is equally impressive. GO MAGIC!!!

As a naysayer of tanking myself, I'll explain my thinking on this take. Myself, I've always qualified that tanking over multiple seasons as a franchise strategy doesn't work. And it hasn't won anyone a championship yet. The kind of tanking I've always been against is tanking as a long-term strategy to build a team (e.g. if the ping pong balls don't go your way, fail harder next ear). We tanked for half a season, and if it jump-started the rebuild and we're a decent team with just developing the guys we have, then great. but...

I would like to point out that we would have had a good shot at getting at least fifth without tanking. I'm not saying without trading Vuc and Fournier and Gordon. That's not tanking so much as committing to a rebuild. Tanking is what we did when we started holding out players for no good reason so we wouldn't luck into a few more wins. Not holding those guys out nets us maybe two wins, I'm thinking. Two games would have given us either the same ping pong balls as the Cavs or Rapters (depending on who we got those extra wins against), or left us at fifth worst in the league. At that point, most likely scenario is either we're doing better than we actually did or the same. It's still unlikely at that point we drop to sixth in the draft. The only other team within win range of us that wouldn't have improved our position swapping with would be Minnesota. The only way we take over their spot with two extra wins is if we beat them specifically, and they won by 32 points in that late-season game. Terrence Ross and Gary Harris and Otto Porter aren't making the difference there. So likely we're either jumping to third like Cleveland did (we'd have the same odds they did), or we're staying at 5 assuming all the balls come out the same. It would be different if we won three games, but I feel like that would be unlikely.

Finally, I don't think any of the non-tanking crew here thinks we shouldn't try to build through the draft and develop players. The argument I've always understood is that improvement should always be the goal. A good example of things that bother the anti-tankers like myself is the situation early in our last rebuild when we didn't sign Jameer because we didn't want him taking minutes away from Elfrid. He wasn't asking for a bunch of money; he's basically said he would have signed for almost nothing. Hennigan dumped him because losing games was in no way a negative to him at that point. It was obvious that having Jameer would have been better for the team, but losing games weighed less in his mind than five or so extra minutes of playing time per game for Elfrid. This is why I think the team should keep MCW around, as well as at least one of Ross/Harris, and they should find a vet big who doesn't mind sporadic minutes. having a few decent vets might win us a couple more games next season and keep us out of last place in the league. It's my opinion that that's okay, because the lottery makes it a crap shoot anyway, and it's just not worth the damage it can do. Go listen to Oladipo talking about the locker room in Orlando when he was here. I've heard it. It's damning. There was no sense of trying to get better as a team, or even really learning to. It was about proving you are the next star, bottom line, that's it. That's what happens when tanking and Best Player Available becomes a religion. And that's what I don't want.

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Interesting there's a lot of buzz that Jalen Suggs had a terrible workout with the Raptors. Hard to know what's real and what's not but I've heard the suggestion he was so bad that they cut the workout short and asked him if he wanted to try again the next day. 

I wonder if that's why Suggs never worked out here? 

I'm not really worried about it. I think this is probably just spin from the Raptors FO to try and sell their fans on Scottie Barnes a bit more because I doubt an organisation as well run as Toronto would not pick a guy based on one empty gym workout alone.

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So real question: I’m the Raptors. I know most people think we’re going to take Jalen Suggs. We like Scottie Barnes more. Why don’t they call the Magic, whom you would assume like Jalen Suggs, and dangle a trade with them for them to get the #4 pick? 
 

My thought on this potential back office negotiation:

1. They did make the call. Their demand was too high and the Magic said “No, at that price, we’re fine with #5.” Or maybe the Magic weren’t interested in trading at all as a game of chess (they’re calling to move back to #5, meaning there is only 1-2 teams they can consider trading with to get the player they actually want).
2. The Raptors we’re afraid that if they traded #4, the Magic would actually pick Scottie Barnes, whom they wanted, based on reports of how much they loved Barnes. 
 

I nonetheless think it’s incredibly that the Magic FO wasn’t forced to trade for the #4 pick to get Suggs. Great job, however it happened, to land Suggs without giving up anything extra. 

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1 hour ago, Justin Jaudon said:

As a naysayer of tanking myself, I'll explain my thinking on this take. Myself, I've always qualified that tanking over multiple seasons as a franchise strategy doesn't work. And it hasn't won anyone a championship yet. The kind of tanking I've always been against is tanking as a long-term strategy to build a team (e.g. if the ping pong balls don't go your way, fail harder next ear). We tanked for half a season, and if it jump-started the rebuild and we're a decent team with just developing the guys we have, then great. but...

I would like to point out that we would have had a good shot at getting at least fifth without tanking. I'm not saying without trading Vuc and Fournier and Gordon. That's not tanking so much as committing to a rebuild. Tanking is what we did when we started holding out players for no good reason so we wouldn't luck into a few more wins. Not holding those guys out nets us maybe two wins, I'm thinking. Two games would have given us either the same ping pong balls as the Cavs or Rapters (depending on who we got those extra wins against), or left us at fifth worst in the league. At that point, most likely scenario is either we're doing better than we actually did or the same. It's still unlikely at that point we drop to sixth in the draft. The only other team within win range of us that wouldn't have improved our position swapping with would be Minnesota. The only way we take over their spot with two extra wins is if we beat them specifically, and they won by 32 points in that late-season game. Terrence Ross and Gary Harris and Otto Porter aren't making the difference there. So likely we're either jumping to third like Cleveland did (we'd have the same odds they did), or we're staying at 5 assuming all the balls come out the same. It would be different if we won three games, but I feel like that would be unlikely.

Finally, I don't think any of the non-tanking crew here thinks we shouldn't try to build through the draft and develop players. The argument I've always understood is that improvement should always be the goal. A good example of things that bother the anti-tankers like myself is the situation early in our last rebuild when we didn't sign Jameer because we didn't want him taking minutes away from Elfrid. He wasn't asking for a bunch of money; he's basically said he would have signed for almost nothing. Hennigan dumped him because losing games was in no way a negative to him at that point. It was obvious that having Jameer would have been better for the team, but losing games weighed less in his mind than five or so extra minutes of playing time per game for Elfrid. This is why I think the team should keep MCW around, as well as at least one of Ross/Harris, and they should find a vet big who doesn't mind sporadic minutes. having a few decent vets might win us a couple more games next season and keep us out of last place in the league. It's my opinion that that's okay, because the lottery makes it a crap shoot anyway, and it's just not worth the damage it can do. Go listen to Oladipo talking about the locker room in Orlando when he was here. I've heard it. It's damning. There was no sense of trying to get better as a team, or even really learning to. It was about proving you are the next star, bottom line, that's it. That's what happens when tanking and Best Player Available becomes a religion. And that's what I don't want.

I think tanking can be psychologically damaging for players. At the same time, I look at our team and our pieces now and think you try to “create a winning culture” now that we have the guys we think that can make that happen long term. 

last season was a lost cause. 2 of our 4 great young players were out for the season, and our 3 best players were not going to help us win a championship. Tanking the final 30 games of one season I don’t think is bad. It’s starting with that mentality at the beginning of the season that leads to player and team breakdown. 

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14 minutes ago, CTMagicUK said:

Interesting there's a lot of buzz that Jalen Suggs had a terrible workout with the Raptors. Hard to know what's real and what's not but I've heard the suggestion he was so bad that they cut the workout short and asked him if he wanted to try again the next day. 

I wonder if that's why Suggs never worked out here? 

I'm not really worried about it. I think this is probably just spin from the Raptors FO to try and sell their fans on Scottie Barnes a bit more because I doubt an organisation as well run as Toronto would not pick a guy based on one empty gym workout alone.

This is 100% damage control spin. My only concern is that we didn’t bring Jalen in for a workout to catch anything that could be concerning, but I don’t think one workout makes or breaks a player evaluation. 

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6 hours ago, All Eyes On Me said:

This is an absurd take. Dwayne Bacon led the team in minutes. Terrence Ross and Otto Porter were held out all but like 2 games after the trade deadline because we were too close to winning them. We had significant minutes played by Brazdeikis, Randle, Hall, Thornwell and Wagner down the stretch.
 

We’ll probably struggle at points to win some games this year just because of how young we are, but it’ll have nothing to do with our tank last season. If anything, players like Cole and RJ, who will be back this year, were outright defiant over the idea of losing on purpose. 

Let us see where we are at game 50 or so and then we can continue the discussion.   I agree that right now, unlike last time, I don’t see a commitment to a long term tank.  Yet.  But if we’re, for example, 15-35, we will be looking at calls from most here to tank again and we get back into the same cycle.  
 

I stand by my comment about most of the team being the same.  It’s true that we won’t be playing some of the g-leaguers that we played at the end of last year, but they were only getting a fraction of the minutes compared to the guys still on the team.  

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36 minutes ago, JJZFL said:

Let us see where we are at game 50 or so and then we can continue the discussion.   I agree that right now, unlike last time, I don’t see a commitment to a long term tank.  Yet.  But if we’re, for example, 15-35, we will be looking at calls from most here to tank again and we get back into the same cycle.  
 

I stand by my comment about most of the team being the same.  It’s true that we won’t be playing some of the g-leaguers that we played at the end of last year, but they were only getting a fraction of the minutes compared to the guys still on the team.  

Over a quarter of the total minutes played last season was made up of this group: Bacon, Clark, Randle, Wagner, Brazdeikis, Bone, Hall, Thornwell, Franks, Mane, Mason, Cannady. 

That's an awful lot of minutes taken up by a group of guys who at most maybe 2 will still be on the roster (Bacon and Wagner) next season. Dwayne Bacon alone played over 10% of the total minutes played and if he's even still on the team next season he'll probably play half that many minutes. 

It's entirely possible that this team will be 15-35 after 50 games this season but I doubt we do much outright tanking until the very last few games of the season because unlike last season, where tanking benefited us by allowing young players to play bigger roles, this season all the young guys will already be playing pretty big roles. 

One thing I wouldn't be surprised if we see which you may consider tanking but I don't is being cautious with Fultz and Isaac even though they're healthy. Kind of like what Philly did and does with Embiid where they rest him on second nights of back to backs and things like that. 

 

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50 minutes ago, JJZFL said:

Let us see where we are at game 50 or so and then we can continue the discussion.   I agree that right now, unlike last time, I don’t see a commitment to a long term tank.  Yet.  But if we’re, for example, 15-35, we will be looking at calls from most here to tank again and we get back into the same cycle.  
 

I stand by my comment about most of the team being the same.  It’s true that we won’t be playing some of the g-leaguers that we played at the end of last year, but they were only getting a fraction of the minutes compared to the guys still on the team.  

This is incorrect.

Brazdeikis averaged 29.3 mins per game for us

Mo Wagner averaged 26 mins per game for us

Donta Hall averaged 13.8 mins per game for us

Randle averaged 20.4 mins per game for us

Bacon averaged 25.7 mins per game for us

Thats just the start.

Edit; just seen CTMagic replied already.

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1 hour ago, CTMagicUK said:

Interesting there's a lot of buzz that Jalen Suggs had a terrible workout with the Raptors. Hard to know what's real and what's not but I've heard the suggestion he was so bad that they cut the workout short and asked him if he wanted to try again the next day. 

I wonder if that's why Suggs never worked out here? 

I'm not really worried about it. I think this is probably just spin from the Raptors FO to try and sell their fans on Scottie Barnes a bit more because I doubt an organisation as well run as Toronto would not pick a guy based on one empty gym workout alone.

Interesting to hear this. There’s also something very interesting I noticed, when the Raptors picked Barnes, Suggs had both hands clinched almost like a double fist pump, and seemed really excited. He’s also super tight with RJ Hampton. I’m not suggesting he would tank a workout on purpose, but I get the vibe that he didn’t want to go to Toronto.

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3 minutes ago, All Eyes On Me said:

Interesting to hear this. There’s also something very interesting I noticed, when the Raptors picked Barnes, Suggs had both hands clinched almost like a double fist pump, and seemed really excited. He’s also super tight with RJ Hampton. I’m not suggesting he would tank a workout on purpose, but I get the vibe that he didn’t want to go to Toronto.

I mean… who doesn’t love sunshine?

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28 minutes ago, All Eyes On Me said:

Interesting to hear this. There’s also something very interesting I noticed, when the Raptors picked Barnes, Suggs had both hands clinched almost like a double fist pump, and seemed really excited. He’s also super tight with RJ Hampton. I’m not suggesting he would tank a workout on purpose, but I get the vibe that he didn’t want to go to Toronto.

See, when I first saw that, I thought putting his head down was an indication that he was disappointed but still putting off an air that he was happy (Orlando is a small market after all).
does anyone have video of Jalen Suggs when his name was not called for Toronto? I feel like that’s more of the indicator of how he felt. 

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