2023-2024 General Game Thread

[harryfromphilly 75]

1 hour ago, Albert Lergier said:

FOR NO REASON, THE STAGE LAST NIGHT SEEMED TOO BIG FOR THE MAGIC.........NOT FOR COLE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MIGHT BE TIME TO INSERT HIM AS A STARTER.....AT THE END OF THE DAY THE STARTERS ARE THE PLAYERS THAT TEAMS RELY TO WIN GAMES.

TEAM NEEDS A PG THAT CAN CREATE ASSITS (5 PER GAME / 36 MPG), SCORE, SHOOT 3'S, REBOUND AND REFIEF PAOLO OF HANDLING THE BALL SO MUCH.

Agree about Your first statement, disagree about Cole    If You watch him in clutch time, he never even looks for anyone else. Yes he had an amazing game, and often does, but just as often shoots us out of the game.    The final seconds of the Kings game was as much about him playing hero ball as to trying to get a win.

Dont mind if he starts the rest of the year, or we give AB a bit of burn, but for the future...

Yes, we need the point guard that You describe     To me, Cole is not him.

[TrueMagicFan07 673]

47 minutes ago, harryfromphilly said:

Agree about Your first statement, disagree about Cole    If You watch him in clutch time, he never even looks for anyone else. Yes he had an amazing game, and often does, but just as often shoots us out of the game.    The final seconds of the Kings game was as much about him playing hero ball as to trying to get a win.

Dont mind if he starts the rest of the year, or we give AB a bit of burn, but for the future...

Yes, we need the point guard that You describe     To me, Cole is not him.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Cole play almost the entire 4th quarter?

E.V.E.R.Y time Cole had the ball in his hands, I feared he was going to shoot. Sure, he did make a number of shots. But each time I saw him with the ball, I was going "get ready" and "there he goes"--my body was tensed. Fortunately he made big shots.

Cole is not consistent game to game. In an earlier post I said I fear that if we make the playoffs, Cole will shoot us out of a game(s).

[CTMagicUK 1,482]

Complaining about Cole after that game specifically is WILD. 

I was more scared that anyone other than Cole was going to shoot. 

[All Eyes On Me 1,210]

Yeah, the Cole hate is wild. Without him, we lose by 20+ last night. 

[All Eyes On Me 1,210]

Gary is off the injury report for tomorrow. First game of a back to back, so I’d expect him, Kelle and JI all to play against the Clippers and sit against the Grizzlies. The Sugg/Harris/Franz/Paolo/WCJ starting 5 I believe is still undefeated.

[JJZFL 619]

1 hour ago, CTMagicUK said:

Complaining about Cole after that game specifically is WILD. 

I was more scared that anyone other than Cole was going to shoot. 

It worked until the last couple of minutes when everyone, including Cole, started to play hero ball. I don’t fault Cole anymore than the rest of them.  His turnaround fadeaway near air ball with under a minute left kind of sealed the loss for us, though.  

[harryfromphilly 75]

1 hour ago, All Eyes On Me said:

Yeah, the Cole hate is wild. Without him, we lose by 20+ last night. 

You have to understand that it is not Cole hate. (At least from me)   I love him as a 6 or 7th man coming off of the bench and injecting a spark of energy.

I am also ok with keeping him in the game longer if he is playing smart and hitting when he shoots..

I dont think he is consistent enough to be either a starting point guard, or in at the end.

That is what I responded to. The desire to let him start.   And I even said that I am ok with him moving to starting for the rest of this year,

But I dont think he is a long term answer as a starting (or finishing) point guard.

 

And yes, as JJZFL said, in this game he was no worse than anyone else.

[TrueMagicFan07 673]

3 hours ago, All Eyes On Me said:

Yeah, the Cole hate is wild. Without him, we lose by 20+ last night. 

First of all, All Eyes, the criticism of Cole did not start after last night's game was over. Me and some others have talked about him being a ball hog before last night's game. So are you telling me there was ball movement everytime the Magic was on offense, and the ball ended up in Cole's hands because he was the only teammate open? I don't think so.

For me, it was not about waiting until the game was over to state an opinion about Cole. I was focused on the game and how the entire team was involved or not involved. I also had another window open on my computer to read the message board participants' comments. By the way, only 6 or 7 participants posted comments during last night's game, and there  were only 2 pages of comments from the beginning of the game until the end of the game (when the game clock hit zero).   

There were only about 6 or 7 board members posting comments during the game. I figured that most posters were too focused on the game and didn't want to stop every second to post a comment. It was either that or they were posting or reading comments on the Magic Realgm Message Board.

I don't think it's fair to call posters who criticize Cole and call us haters. Every person has their opinion. That is harsh to say we/me are haters. I like Joe Ingles. I sometimes post shoutouts to Joe when he does something well. Does anyone call me an Ingles 'lover' as opposed to 'hater'? 

We lost the game, and there are a number of things that factor into why we lost like not making free throws. But what really stood out to me was lack of ball movement which led to hero ball from Cole.

Cole is a very inconsistent player from one game to another. 

I HOPE THE MAGIC WIN 7 OR 8 GAMES OF THE REMAINING REGULAR SEASON GAMES!!!

GO MAGIC!!!

[All Eyes On Me 1,210]

10 minutes ago, TrueMagicFan07 said:

First of all, All Eyes, the criticism of Cole did not start after last night's game was over. Me and some others have talked about him being a ball hog before last night's game. So are you telling me there was ball movement everytime the Magic was on offense, and the ball ended up in Cole's hands because he was the only teammate open? I don't think so.

For me, it was not about waiting until the game was over to state an opinion about Cole. I was focused on the game and how the entire team was involved or not involved. I also had another window open on my computer to read the message board participants' comments. By the way, only 6 or 7 participants posted comments during last night's game, and there were was only one (1) page of comments from the beginning of the game until the end of the game (when the game clock hit zero).   

There were only about 6 or 7 board members posting comments during the game. I figured that most posters were too focused on the game and didn't want to stop every second to post a comment. It was either that or they were posting or reading comments on the Magic Realgm Message Board.

I don't think it's fair to call posters who criticize Cole and call us haters. Every person has their opinion. That is harsh to say we/me are haters. I like Joe Ingles. I sometimes post shoutouts to Joe when he does something well. Does anyone call me an Ingles 'lover' as opposed to 'hater'? 

We lost the game, and there are a number of things that factor into why we lost like not making free throws. But what really stood out to me was lack of ball movement which led to hero ball from Cole.

Cole is a very inconsistent player from one game to another. 

I HOPE THE MAGIC WIN 7 OR 8 GAMES OF THE REMAINING REGULAR SEASON GAMES!!!

GO MAGIC!!!

Oh I didn’t mean to offend anyone. It’s just consistent with Cole. He’s divisive on this board. He plays poorly he’s the first one to get called out, but he never gets credit when he plays well. He’s a spark plug, and when he’s playing like he was last night, you bet your behind I want him playing the whole 4th quarter over Markelle Fultz who won’t look at the basket if he’s further than 10 feet out. I just feel like Cole is a scapegoat, when most nights we have much bigger problems. Our biggest issues in the rotation right now are Joe Ingles and Markelle Fultz, Wendell Carter gets a consolation prize here as well. 

[CTMagicUK 1,482]

8 hours ago, All Eyes On Me said:

Oh I didn’t mean to offend anyone. It’s just consistent with Cole. He’s divisive on this board. He plays poorly he’s the first one to get called out, but he never gets credit when he plays well. He’s a spark plug, and when he’s playing like he was last night, you bet your behind I want him playing the whole 4th quarter over Markelle Fultz who won’t look at the basket if he’s further than 10 feet out. I just feel like Cole is a scapegoat, when most nights we have much bigger problems. Our biggest issues in the rotation right now are Joe Ingles and Markelle Fultz, Wendell Carter gets a consolation prize here as well. 

I agree with this 100%. I've been harsh as hell on Cole at times this year but that's why he deserves his flowers when he plays well. He's still a bad defensive player for the way we specifically play defense (heavy switching and a lot of single coverage with late help) but he's really improved on defense this season honestly, he makes smart rotations, he helps and recovers, he plays hard on that end. He's just not especially long or strong. But when he is hitting shots that opens up the rest of his game and he can get in the lane and play make etc he can be a real positive for us. 

I also agree with the problem areas of the rotation. The thing about Joe specifically though is for as generally bad as he is on defense there are times where it feels like the Jo/Mo pick and roll is the single most productive action our team runs so I'm generally thankful for Joe, a 29 year old Joe Ingles who played defense would be a dream. 

Wendell I'm sad about. He was comfortably a top 3 player for us last season, this season I'm not sure I'd put him in the top 5. (Part of that is the leveling up of Suggs and the return to health of JI but also Wendell has just not been as good or as aggressive). I am starting to wonder if we move Wendell in the summer and stick with Goga (or sign another C like Hartenstein or Claxton). Like I'm not necessarily saying I'd do that but I do think that's more of a possibility now than it was at the start of the season. 

[All Eyes On Me 1,210]

6 hours ago, CTMagicUK said:

I agree with this 100%. I've been harsh as hell on Cole at times this year but that's why he deserves his flowers when he plays well. He's still a bad defensive player for the way we specifically play defense (heavy switching and a lot of single coverage with late help) but he's really improved on defense this season honestly, he makes smart rotations, he helps and recovers, he plays hard on that end. He's just not especially long or strong. But when he is hitting shots that opens up the rest of his game and he can get in the lane and play make etc he can be a real positive for us. 

I also agree with the problem areas of the rotation. The thing about Joe specifically though is for as generally bad as he is on defense there are times where it feels like the Jo/Mo pick and roll is the single most productive action our team runs so I'm generally thankful for Joe, a 29 year old Joe Ingles who played defense would be a dream. 

Wendell I'm sad about. He was comfortably a top 3 player for us last season, this season I'm not sure I'd put him in the top 5. (Part of that is the leveling up of Suggs and the return to health of JI but also Wendell has just not been as good or as aggressive). I am starting to wonder if we move Wendell in the summer and stick with Goga (or sign another C like Hartenstein or Claxton). Like I'm not necessarily saying I'd do that but I do think that's more of a possibility now than it was at the start of the season. 

I’d love either Hartenstein or Claxton with the assumption that we fix our spacing by adding more shooting at the guard positions. Right now WCJ works better than most 5s would with our starting 5 because we need his spacing at the position. I agree with you that he’s disappointed this year, and the amount of games Mosley has willingly sat him in crunch time is pretty telling that he doesn’t have a guaranteed spot in our future anymore like we all assumed he did a year ago.

[All Eyes On Me 1,210]

Fultz has popped up on the injury report for tonight as questionable due to injury maintenance. First night of a back to back so we’ll probably stagger our holdouts with Kelle missing tonight and Harris and Isaac missing tomorrow