MAGIC @ Spurs Official Game Thread 8.30 EST

[Soul Bro 1,419]

It’s been an exhausting season! Lol

[All Eyes On Me 1,196]

1 hour ago, CTMagicUK said:

Yknow I've just seen that the Bamba/WCJ minutes have really good ratings (tiny sample size) that's surprising to me because I didn't really feel that way watching it but I guess I might just be wrong about that? Maybe it can work? (Or maybe it's just small sample sizes and I'm overthinking it)

I don’t think it’ll work long term or as a core lineup, but it seems like it could work in spurts if we have to. I couldn’t agree more about your comment that Bamba is killing us by still not being able to take advantage when he gets the other teams point guard switched on to him.

Just seeing Wendell only played 19 minutes tonight?! That’s strange

[Natesroom 197]

2 hours ago, CTMagicUK said:

Yknow I've just seen that the Bamba/WCJ minutes have really good ratings (tiny sample size) that's surprising to me because I didn't really feel that way watching it but I guess I might just be wrong about that? Maybe it can work? (Or maybe it's just small sample sizes and I'm overthinking it)

This is actually been a surprising effective pairing. The problems happen when they slot in 2 players who dont work well together.

Players not to play together during this pairing would be avoid cole/suggs together also avoid cole/hampton with this pairing. If you want to run cole with this pairing it has to be with ross and harris. Issues i saw from Pre to 1st game was why have back to basket players (40% of the lineup) then have 2 people who want to iso and drive. Cole works good with this pairing by himself as he actually is a good finisher 1 on 1 when there is no collapsing defense. With Mo and WCJ at the same time their defenders cant leave for help defense. When you have cole and hampton and suggs they pack the paint as 4 out 5 want to attack the rim with no competent outside shooters.

[All Eyes On Me 1,196]

Big chance after the hot start was when the Spurs started full court press and switching everything on defense, we couldn’t handle it. We had 14 FGA with under 4 seconds on the shot clock. We need Markelle back bad

[Franchise408 116]

12 hours ago, JJZFL said:

I think it's more like realism vs pie in the sky optimism.  We have the worst record in the NBA over the past 10 years and you've been consistently optimistic about us the entire time.  At some point it's just detached from reality.

I don't think there's anything wrong with optimism. I was actually really optimistic about this team when we started making playoffs, when everyone thought playoffs = doom. We saw it at the beginning of last season before the injuries, when we had the best record in the conference and the offense was clicking both in the starting lineup and off the bench. I actually felt that injuries last year were an entirely awful reason to blow the whole thing up, because we had so much youth that was going to continue to grow and develop, and contrary to popular belief, we hadn't "topped out" with guys like Fultz and Isaac as our core.

As we saw last night, guys like Fultz and Isaac still are our core, but instead of being surrounded by proven talent like Vuc, now we have the raw players like Suggs, Cole, and RJ running the show.

It is what it is, and it's too late to go back now, but if the whole point was to blow it up and go full blown youth movement, then we did that, and I don't think people are wrong for feeling optimistic about the potential we have in a youth core of Fultz, Isaac, Bamba, Carter, RJ, Cole, Chuma, Suggs, and Wagner. We certainly aren't in "win now" mode.

[CTMagicUK 1,476]

1 hour ago, All Eyes On Me said:

Big chance after the hot start was when the Spurs started full court press and switching everything on defense, we couldn’t handle it. We had 14 FGA with under 4 seconds on the shot clock. We need Markelle back bad

Yea the first time they turned on the press we looked like we'd never played basketball before. And our inability to create anything off the dribble in the half court was frustrating but not really surprising. Fultz is still comfortably the best PG on this team in my opinion. 

[All Eyes On Me 1,196]

18 minutes ago, CTMagicUK said:

Yea the first time they turned on the press we looked like we'd never played basketball before. And our inability to create anything off the dribble in the half court was frustrating but not really surprising. Fultz is still comfortably the best PG on this team in my opinion. 

I’d go further and say Markelle is currently the only PG on the team. 

[Natesroom 197]

40 minutes ago, All Eyes On Me said:

I’d go further and say Markelle is currently the only PG on the team. 

yeah id say:

Cole=Isaiah Thomas (the recent one) so not a PG 

I dont mean now i mean trajectory if they were to get better

[OnlyFranz 289]

45 minutes ago, All Eyes On Me said:

I’d go further and say Markelle is currently the only PG on the team. 

Fully agree here. We need him back in the worst way possible to take the ball out of Cole Anthony’s black hole of an offense hands. 

[All Eyes On Me 1,196]

16 minutes ago, Natesroom said:

yeah id say:

Cole=Isaiah Thomas (the recent one) so not a PG 

I dont mean now i mean trajectory if they were to get better

Absolute best case scenario for Cole is Fred VanVleet, but he’s got a long way to go to get there. He’s an undersized off-ball 2, he doesn’t have the ball handling or vision to be a 1 in the NBA, we’ll see if he gets there, but asking him to run the offense, especially with this supporting cast right now, is disastrous 

[Soul Bro 1,419]

Patience, everyone, patience. We started two rookies yesterday. We started a whole squad under the age of 23. We started with a new coach. It’s going to take a lot of time for this new crew to settle in and grow up together. 

[All Eyes On Me 1,196]

57 minutes ago, Soul Bro said:

Patience, everyone, patience. We started two rookies yesterday. We started a whole squad under the age of 23. We started with a new coach. It’s going to take a lot of time for this new crew to settle in and grow up together. 

Definitely. Also we should look a lot better as Chuma, Kelle and JI get worked back in. I’d just rather start with Suggs learning how to be an NBA PG now instead of playing him off ball and having Cole run the offense.