2023-2024 General Game Thread

[Jason Funderburker 110]

Franz finally hitting some 3s is good to see

[orlandoholic 137]

5 hours ago, OnlyFranz said:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Goga is a better fit for this team than WCJ. We should look to trade him for a good shooter and additional assets. Also Cole Anthony is such a liability on defense that his streaky offensive play hurts us more than helps us. The sooner we get a real point guard who can initiate the offense, play defense, and stretch the floor the better our team will be. Great gritty win tonight we needed it before we go on that brutal west coast trip. 

no, just no with that take on Goga.. 
I’m not bashing Goga at all. He does two things great. Hustle and set screens. He doesn’t do anything else for us. You can’t switch him like you can with WCJ, WCJ is a better post defender and is not foul prone like Goga. 

Goga got abused by Randöe the majority of the game. He’ll get some hustle weak side blocks, yeah looks great. But it’s more to this..

Im not even going to argue with offense value of a healthy WCJ. 

I’m not even mad at you. People forget how good players are when they are injured long enough. People doubted Isaac and he came back as elite on defense as he was before. 

People doubted Fultz and start to doubt him again. But when he played, he is the best floor general and game manager out there 

[orlandoholic 137]

Caleb Houstan with a disappointing game. He missed 5 wide open 3s. 
Okeke still plays like a rookie after all these years in the NBA. 

Before the season, it was said, the new incoming rookies need to take somebody’s job. 

Either Jett Howard is terrible or in some kind of doghouse. Because i don’t understand why he can’t see the field and Houstan and Okeke can. 

[CTMagicUK 1,491]

Fun game. Great win. Needed that one at home with the West Coast road trip upcoming. 

Basically all the starters were great. Goga was a big body we really needed against a physical Knicks team. 

Mo Wagner 11 rebounds in 18 mins off the bench is crazy. 

But man, missing Harris and Ingles and then Houstan going 0-5 from 3, Okeke going 0-4 and  Cole going 0-3... That's just not enough shooting. Houstan is on this roster to shoot. Cole also has to be a better floor spacer for this to work.

 

[ball junkie 277]

https://www.espn.com/nba/stats/team/_/table/offensive/sort/threePointPct/dir/desc

At 33.2 we are now dead last in the league in 3 point shooting …worse than Detroit …31 games in the books that’s a pretty good sample size …not good imo 

[Jamesdin 44]

42 minutes ago, ball junkie said:

https://www.espn.com/nba/stats/team/_/table/offensive/sort/threePointPct/dir/desc

At 33.2 we are now dead last in the league in 3 point shooting …worse than Detroit …31 games in the books that’s a pretty good sample size …not good imo 

This shows how elite our defense actually is. Having a winning record shooting dead last on 3pt says a lot. 

[OnlyFranz 293]

5 hours ago, orlandoholic said:

no, just no with that take on Goga.. 
I’m not bashing Goga at all. He does two things great. Hustle and set screens. He doesn’t do anything else for us. You can’t switch him like you can with WCJ, WCJ is a better post defender and is not foul prone like Goga. 

Goga got abused by Randöe the majority of the game. He’ll get some hustle weak side blocks, yeah looks great. But it’s more to this..

Im not even going to argue with offense value of a healthy WCJ. 

I’m not even mad at you. People forget how good players are when they are injured long enough. People doubted Isaac and he came back as elite on defense as he was before. 

People doubted Fultz and start to doubt him again. But when he played, he is the best floor general and game manager out there 

We can agree to disagree and that’s ok. Goga is also a good passer, a better shot blocker, and he grabs offensive boards. Don’t get me wrong I like WCJ’s game he’s just too perimeter oriented when we don’t necessarily need that from the 5 position. Sure it’s a luxury to have but I prefer my bigs playing closer to the basket because that’s how you get those second chance points which is what this team thrives on. 
 

To be fair most guys get abused by Randle especially in the last 15 games where he’s been averaging like 27 a game. Plus that’s not even Goga’s assignment on defense so if anything it was Paolo who was getting abused by Randle.

 

Adding on to my first point WCJ tends to hold the ball on offense longer than Goga does. Since he’s a better offensive player he tends to try and do more things on that end. Goga on the other hand keeps the ball moving and our offense is more fluid. WCJ is also another mouth to feed on offense which can be great when his shot is falling but will also hurt you when it’s not since he doesn’t play nearly as much as Goga near the basket. It also takes shots away from Franz, Paolo, and Suggs in the starting 5.
 

The only reason I’d even consider trading WCJ is because he’s on a very team friendly contract, we have too many forwards/centers, and we could get a good player for him who can space the floor and plays a different position while getting additional assets as well. 
 

Again it’s not that I don’t like WCJ I just think Goga fits better with our starters and brings more value on the defensive end for cheap. Which would allow us to upgrade our roster and address the glaring need for 3 point shooting/floor spacing. 

[Soul Bro 1,422]

6 hours ago, CTMagicUK said:

But man, missing Harris and Ingles and then Houstan going 0-5 from 3, Okeke going 0-4 and  Cole going 0-3... That's just not enough shooting. Houstan is on this roster to shoot. Cole also has to be a better floor spacer for this to work.

Our wing role players are either hurt or inconsistent from three. To me, Chuma should be cut or benched. For years it’s been the same with him. Caleb doesn’t do much for me either if his shot isn’t falling. And Harris always seems to be hurt. The Heat always seem to find good shooting role players for cheap. I wish we could do the same. 

[CTMagicUK 1,491]

Being dead last in the league in 3P% whilst having our best start to the season in forever and being the 5th seed (tied for 4th seed by record) isn't a bad thing. 

There's a random aspect to 3 point shooting that even the best shooting teams experience. Bad teams can win games if they get hot, good teams can lose games if they go cold. That adds an element of randomness to a team which in turn adds an element of uncertainty to your evaluation of your team. (I.e. are we actually good or did we just get some hot shooting on a few more nights than expected?) We don't have that. More often than not we get out shot by the other team but we've still won 61% of our games this season to date. By basically any measure we are a good team in spite of the shooting. Being able to confidently say you're a good team is kind of an important step in the rebuild because it allows you to reprioritize how you act and behave with respect to trades, free agents, even the draft. 

Shooting being such an obvious low hanging fruit for this team is actually great. Our biggest weakness is obvious and fixable.

Shooting alone, especially just catch and shoot, is not hard to find. Here's a list of less than 5 million a season free agents signed last summer:

Lonnie Walker IV (career 36%, shooting 46% from 3 this season)

Yuta Watanabe (career 38% from 3)

Damion Lee (career 38% from 3)

Torrey Craig (career 35% from 3, 38% from 3 this year)

Malik Beasley (career 39% from 3)

Josh Richardson (career 36% from 3)

Justin Holiday (career 36% from 3)

Wesley Matthews (career 38% from 3)

Danny Green (career 40% from 3)

Eric Gordon (career 37% from 3)

Troy Brown Jr (career 36% from 3)

Seth Curry (career 44% from 3)

Shake Milton (career 36% from 3)

Now there's obviously reasons those guys are cheap and none of them alone would make a considerable difference to us, just illustrative that if you strictly went looking for guys who could shoot to fill out the end of your bench you could do it. When we've got Paolo and Franz on max deals we'll be shopping in this realm to fill out the bench.

[fan for too long 2 534]

CT, yet after having a bad shooting team for what seems like a decade, the Magic signed none of them. So what make you think they will make any moves to get shooters?

[ball junkie 277]

With many games coming up against plus 500 teams we’ll see how the poor shooting influences the won loss record 

[orlandoholic 137]

41 minutes ago, CTMagicUK said:

Being dead last in the league in 3P% whilst having our best start to the season in forever and being the 5th seed (tied for 4th seed by record) isn't a bad thing. 

There's a random aspect to 3 point shooting that even the best shooting teams experience. Bad teams can win games if they get hot, good teams can lose games if they go cold. That adds an element of randomness to a team which in turn adds an element of uncertainty to your evaluation of your team. (I.e. are we actually good or did we just get some hot shooting on a few more nights than expected?) We don't have that. More often than not we get out shot by the other team but we've still won 61% of our games this season to date. By basically any measure we are a good team in spite of the shooting. Being able to confidently say you're a good team is kind of an important step in the rebuild because it allows you to reprioritize how you act and behave with respect to trades, free agents, even the draft. 

Shooting being such an obvious low hanging fruit for this team is actually great. Our biggest weakness is obvious and fixable.

Shooting alone, especially just catch and shoot, is not hard to find. Here's a list of less than 5 million a season free agents signed last summer:

Lonnie Walker IV (career 36%, shooting 46% from 3 this season)

Yuta Watanabe (career 38% from 3)

Damion Lee (career 38% from 3)

Torrey Craig (career 35% from 3, 38% from 3 this year)

Malik Beasley (career 39% from 3)

Josh Richardson (career 36% from 3)

Justin Holiday (career 36% from 3)

Wesley Matthews (career 38% from 3)

Danny Green (career 40% from 3)

Eric Gordon (career 37% from 3)

Troy Brown Jr (career 36% from 3)

Seth Curry (career 44% from 3)

Shake Milton (career 36% from 3)

Now there's obviously reasons those guys are cheap and none of them alone would make a considerable difference to us, just illustrative that if you strictly went looking for guys who could shoot to fill out the end of your bench you could do it. When we've got Paolo and Franz on max deals we'll be shopping in this realm to fill out the bench.

we signed a shooter. The man’s name is Ingles. I like him on our team more than any of those players..