Leaderboard

No worries, The Magic have brought big joy to this Christmas! https://x.com/nba/status/1871390875173151031?s=46 This team is family! We as fans have to do a better job! I feel like we a Magic family. Ain’t no fanbase went through what we went through. So no point fighting about two ways or whatever. I have great confidence in the front office and also this team. I be posting these fan gm posting just to engage. I know it can be annoying to some. But i can’t help it, i care about this team so much, always wanting to improve. These injuries could go down in history as the best thing that could have happened to us. The other players can’t be passive, ball watching whatever Paolo and Franz does. Anyway, Merry Christmas to the Magic family

Shout out to Andy Larsson of the Salt Lake Tribune and Kevin Pelton ESPN's resident stat guy who stopped Paolo being unanimous Rookie of the Year by voting Walker Kessler. Some takes are wrong immediately, some take a few years before it becomes apparent they were wrong. And then there are takes that were both wrong at the time and continue to look increasingly more wrong the more that time goes on.

Every time Cole starts at PG a kitten dies. Orlando Magic, please take care of the kittens.

We are somehow 17-9... without our star... and now without our second star. Weltman and Co. have won my trust. I think the following moves have been savvy and unexpected: Drafting Paulo Trading Vooch for WCJ and two 1sts... Then using the first of the two picks to grab Franz Drafting AB, who has crazy two-way upside Drafting TDS, who is a a perfect glue fit Grabbing and extending Mo and Goga Drafting and being patient with JI Drafting and being patient with Jalen Signing Mose to be our coach Do I love everything Weltman has done? Of course not. But he and his crew have demonstrated an ability to identify talent, build a winning culture, and be patient in their development plan. I still believe we are a year or two away from really competing, but I remain curious as to how this group will grow as individuals and as a team. Go Magic!

This team is what the Rob Hennigan teams were supposed to be. Shout out to Paolo

I'm no TMF but I couldn't let the season opener not have a game thread.

I'm by no means Walter Clayton Jrs biggest fan, I like him, i'd be happy with drafting him, but I'm not sold he's some star or anything. That being said, inspired by your comment I went to barttorvik to look for similar statistical profiles to him, and now granted I used arbitrary cut off points.. (if you're interested it was: Games Played ≥ 15; Assist % ≥ 20; Ast/TO Ratio ≥ 1.5; 2P FG % ≥ 0.5; 3P FG % ≥ 0.37; 3PA/100 Poss ≥ 12; Free Throw % ≥ 0.8) ..but the only drafted player that met those thresholds (that, again, I derived from Walter Clayton Jrs profile) was 2012 Damian Lillard. But, there were also a bunch of undrafted, non prospect, scoring PGs guys like Max Abmas in 2021, Steven Ashworth in 2023 etc. If you lower some of the thresholds slightly to account for an element of randomness, and filter only for draft picks (because otherwise you get a long long list of random names and filtering for draft picks is kind of short hand for filtering out guys who played in weird low conferences or never had NBA athleticism to be considered a prospect) you get names like: Coby White Jimmer Fredette Trae Young Klay Thompson Cameron Payne Isaiah Cannan Shelvin Mack Jared Butler (Just FYI I feel like we should asterix Trae Young, and to a certain extent Lillard and Thompson because they all scored on more volume than Clayton did and I think were all more clearly NBA caliber offensive creators hence why all were high draft picks) It's a weird list that I think helps to identify the difficulty in evaluating a guy like Clayton, because there have been a lot of star NCAA guards that weren't great NBA players... But he was also statistically very impressive and he lead a team to a national championship which adds sort of 'intangible' points.

It's hard for me to see posts like this, when you consider that our fascination with tanking led to about 15 years of futility. And now you want to contaminate our current roster, with lots of young players and two young stars, with the idea that winning isn't important and you can just turn it on and off. It's really hard to think of any worse idea than this.

I got to go to last nights game. It was the best performance I’ve seen by a player live. Though Paolo’s 50 point game was close. I knew when Steph hit that half court shot at half time we were in for it. He is definitely my favorite non Magic player of all time.

If this team trades Paolo for Zion we deserve to get clowned as hard as the Mavs.

0-4 vs Portland and Utah this year is impressive in all the bad ways something can be impressive

A perfect and realistic trade deadline would be adding Cam Johnson and Keon Ellis! Super underrated: Rotation: PG: Suggs, AB, Queen SG: KCP, Ellis, SF: F. Wagner, C. Johnson, C. Houstan PF: Banchero, Isaac, TDS C: Bitadze, WCJ Having Suggs, KCP, AB and Ellis causing havoc on defense would be beautiful to watch

Jalen cost us this game with his untimely turnovers and ill advised 3 point shooting in the 4th. We stopped moving the ball and went to iso basketball and jacking up 3 pointers which is always a recipe for disaster.

Just bought four tickets to take the family to the early Sunday home game against the Nets in two weeks (12/29). Wasn’t cheap but we’re all looking forward to it!

Always glad to see the lakers lose.

KCP’s impact on the game today is the difference

Always nice to win the ugly ones, but that was gross! 9-1 stretch without Paolo is incredible and unexpected. We’re 12-7 and 3rd in the East!! We’ve got 7 more games left until that “bye week” where we’re off from Dec 9 - 18. Most of those games are on the road, but there aren’t any world beaters in there, so if we go 4-3 or 5-2 in that stretch, we’re looking at 17-9 or 16-10 through 26 games and maybe getting Paolo back and a nice home stand through the end of the year starting on Dec 19. Sky’s the limit, Go Magic

Magic last 5 opponents: 86 PTS 90 PTS 89 PTS 94 PTS 88 PTS They are absolutely suffocating teams right now

We definitely never saw a KCP lineup last year.

I'm not understanding your comments at all. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a point guard having the ball in their hands as long as they use it to set up the other players on the team with good opportunities. in fact, that's the whole point. It's way better than giving the ball to Paulo at the top of the key and hoping he can go 1v5 or make some shot with a very high degree of difficulty. Let's make life easier for the players we hope will be our stars.

Depressing. L

Making a move for a point guard has been long overdue, so let’s just kick that can down the road till eternity. Stadium is full, we good.

Guess I’m the only one watching. Lol. Anyway just heard that the NBA is now kissing the Sheik’s butt and naming the In season tournament the Emirate Cup. Proving once again that Made in the USA or even owned by an American company means Nothing to these big organizations. Bunch of money whores, that don’t give a dam about anything else.

I’m not sure we didn’t offer PG that deal, there was probably a reason he had us set up 3rd in the meeting order and we bounced quickly. There is an argument to be made that Philly’s window is a bit more open than ours the next year or two. I think we also forget just how hard it is to get the perfect pieces for a shot at it all. A lot has to come together to even get one title: - Took Boston 7 years to get it right for Tatum and they had stints with Hayward and Kyrie that failed miserably. -Took Denver 8 years with Jokic. -Golden State needed 6 years to build around Curry.

Not a single all defensive team selection for the team with the 2nd ranked NBA defense. And honestly, it's hard to look at it and say "x should have made it". Suggs and Franz didn't play enough games and then everyone else didn't have a big enough role or impact probably, except KCP but the narrative around him wasn't very strong given his weak offensive performance and big FA signing and he doesn't have ridiculous flashy defensive stats. But anyway that's a credit to Mosely's coaching to have the leagues 2nd best defense without a single all defensive team player.

AB really isn’t doing much on the offensive end tonight. He dribbles the ball slowly up the court, hangs around for a few seconds, then just dumps it off. He is just not the kind of quick guard who darts in and out of the opponent defense that we need.

I missed the team early this season And when p5 was out were Franz was operating, That was FUN! and we just got broken. been a fan for 30 years now. This is not new, this is what magic basketball is about.

Two teams went to 7 games last season. One team looked at what happened, identified it's biggest weakness (coaching in the Cavs case) and then made changes. The other team looked at its biggest weakness (shooting, offense generally) and said "well we just gave 20mil to a 5th option roleplayer from a championship team who can shoot so that ought to do it." I didn't watch the whole game, about half way through the 3rd it was apparent that whenever we scraped and clawed the lead down a couple points the Cavs had immediate and easy answers. More than anything I'm just super bored with the same players, the same problems, the same story every time we run into a real contender.

Gary Harris has missed 29 of 54 games. In the 25 games he has played he's scored 0 points 10 times. If he's on the roster next season the only possible explanation is he's Jeff Weltman's illegitimate son.

I’ll tell you one thing, the board is a hell of a lot more active when we suck lol

Coach after the blowout loss tonight and only scoring like 89 points.."Look it's a make or miss league. I'll just have to take a look at the film and see if those wide-open shots were makable shots. But I'm proud of the way our guys hung in there and only lost by 21"

Counterpoint, it wouldn’t be very Weltman like to make any sort of trade at all.

Exactly. Trajan Langdon fixed the Pistons shooting problem as soon as he took over, and for cheap, too. This dude been here since 2017 and we been the worst shooting team since then. Pathetic. Langdon provided Cade Cunningham with the spacing he needed to take his game to the next level and they been one of the hottest teams in the league. Paolo was averaging damn near 30 ppg with the worst spacing in the league. He has to work for every shot, and it's been like that since he's been here. The man damn near begged for a table setter all off-season, only for Weltman to force Suggs to play out of position.

It will obviously be great to have him back. I just hope we keep up the team play that we've seen (at times, anyway) while the stars have been out. I don't want to go back to having everyone else either: A. Throw the ball to Paulo and then stand around watching. B. Decide it's their turn to shine, go one vs 2-3 and put up a forced shot. These behaviors were particularly prevalent towards the end of close games. I hope we'll continue to improve our teamwork going forward, even as the stars return.

That’s way too much. Kills our backcourt depth. I don’t know if there’s a player in the league id be willing to give up TDS, AB and 3 firsts for

I get the general thought but I'm going to push back on this a little mostly because our lack of scoring talent casts Mo Wagner as our 4th best scorer and thus allows you to include White and Anunoby above when both of those guys are tremendously more impactful on winning than Mo Wagner (not a shot at Mo I love him but we're talking scoring bench big versus versatile 2 way player) Which to me is a solid argument that the roster isn't quite balanced correctly and making a trade to add a piece that would push Mo Wagner down the pecking order in that regard makes a lot of sense.

Amazing how much fun we are to watch when everyone gets to touch the ball on offense. Really seems to energize our players.

Sometimes teams get all the bounces. We just need to make sure we don’t lose by 30 at this point

Fun fact, last season Tyus Jones was statistically the worst defensive player on the 28th ranked defense in the NBA.

Actually we only have that week off if we don't clinch a spot in the Cup's Quarter Finals. And we are in a good position to do it!

That was one of the worst games of basketball I've ever seen. We were terrible on offense and Charlotte were somehow worse. A win is a win though. Tough night for Tristan. They dared him to beat them and when he missed a few in a row he got hesitant and then they could sag all the way off him. Similar thing happened with Black. And they were selective with it too, they ran KCP and Jett off the line all night. It bit them a little bit because Jonathan Isaac just kept shooting them and eventually got a couple to go. Smart defense from the Hornets though really, they seem well coached on that end, if they weren't so incredibly loose with the ball they'd have likely won that game but they had like 500 turnovers. Against these not great teams our defense is often enough but still you'd like to not be totally inept on offense.

Franz Wagner has *****ing arrived!!! What a dub!

That's cool. But your anecdotal story of one person, yourself a non-pro player, isn't going to convince me that a guy who's been in the NBA for 7 seasons and has never been a good defender will suddenly become one. Chauncey Billlups, whatever you think of him as a coach or a man, was a part of some of the best defenses of all time. I find it hard to believe he doesn't expect his players to play good defense.

Think the biggest issue in the 2nd unit is we didn’t replace Fultz or Ingles with a playmaker. We had so few playmakers to begin with and we don’t have any creators off the bench. We also still have a bunch of vets who can’t hit wide open shots. I’m trying not to be too reactionary, but we might want to consider an early season trade to keep our heads above water. I also think the team needs to get home before we can judge them too harshly, this has been the road trip from hell. Also, I know it’s frustrating with constantly injured players, I’m guilty of being hard on them as much as anyone, but I’m heartbroken for WCJ. Seeing him in tears on the bench because his body just isn’t cooperating with his mind really reminded me of the human element. It was also really cool to see Suggs comforting him. Even if we’re in a slump and the early season has been rough, I’m glad I root for a team filled with genuinely good dudes.

Stopped watching at the half. Being down your best player and 2 of your 4 bigs against a big physical team like Cleveland was always going to be an incredibly tall order. Like I say I only watched the first half but here are the thoughts I did have: How is Ty Jerome allowed to assault our players for the basketball multiple times but Jalen Suggs brushes Donovan Mitchell and it's a foul? Would like to see some more aggressive attacking from Anthony Black, his handle has improved and he had that 1 iso on I think Lavert where he got to the hoop and scored. More of that. TDS is definitely ready to play offense in the league right now. Jumper is fast and clean, makes smart cuts, passes out of the short roll. On defense though I saw him get bodied by Jerome, a PG, which is probably why Mose doesn't trust him yet. Really haven't seen anything from Jett yet. Cole has somehow regressed. He was always frustrating but he usually was good for a couple of buckets. Now he's doing very little right and seems to be losing the trust of the coaches. Franz was disappointing. Next season he'll be making max money. If you're getting paid the big money the standard is different. Jalen can be frustrating but I'd take frustrating and aggressive over passive and sharing the ball when we don't have Paolo to shoulder the scoring.

Ok, I’m going to try to bring in a bit of optimism on the Paolo news and I think I have an idea of when he could be back based off the schedule. First, while I’m sure the injury is painful AF and it’s not ideal, at least it’s not worse, and at least it’s not a lower body injury. It’s also not something that should linger once he gets back, and Paolo does have a career so far where he’s been incredibly durable. I also don’t worry about a slow ramp up, this isn’t Markelle Fultz or JI or Gary or Wendell who are hurt all the time, I’m confident with Paolo’s work ethic and his youth that he’ll be back within the time frame laid out. Looking at the schedule we have a large break between a game on December 8th, which is roughly 5 weeks out, and a game on December 19th. I imagine this is the targeted return date, about 6.5 weeks out from injury diagnosis. If this is the case, Paolo will miss 21 games. Of those 21 games, 8 of them are at home and 7 are against teams that weren’t playoff teams last year. This is a BRUTAL schedule to start the season, and would’ve been with or without Paolo. If we can go something like 9-12 in the games Paolo misses or better and be at 12-14 or so when he’s back, we’ll be ready to make a run to make up some seeding over the last 2/3 of the season. Again, not ideal, but also could have been significantly worse. While P5 is out, I’m excited to see what Alpha Franz looks like, and I’m nervous about Jalen trying to do too much. I’d like to see JI with the starters in Paolo’s place and the bench rotation slide Moe to the 4 with Goga at the 5. Something like Suggs/KCP/Franz/JI/Dell with a bench rotation of AB/Jett-Cole/GH/Moe/Goga. We did a good job building depth and that’s still a solid rotation, especially when positive regression for the shooting comes along for pretty much everyone not named Jalen to start the year. It’ll be an interesting next month or so to see what these kids, and Coach Mose are made of. Go Magic!

Pre season or not Paolo is going to go as far as he wants to.. this kid has all time great written all over him.... absolute juggernaut already and he is only going to improve and improve.... SUPERSTAR!!!!

From my standpoint we don’t have a real point guard, so I’ll take anything we can get

You are right about everything you wrote about OKC. They are further along than us currently. However I just have to say this as I think a Presti and also Daryl Morey from Philly never get called out by the fans boys on the internet. How many championships has Presti brought to OKC in his 17 years as their GM? How many Hall of Famers and MVPs have left him? His teams are always in the mix but he tends to get cute like he did with the Harden trade years ago. He sat on his picks and trade assists during this trade deadline when it was clear they needed a center to protect stick boy. I like their summer with Caruso and Hartenstein though. I’m sure this won’t be popular as Presti can do no wrong according to the media. I just don’t like that he gets treated like he’s Pat Riley when his teams have never won a ring and only made The Finals one time with so much extreme talent.

We improved? How? KCP? I mean we basically just retained what we already had. How did we improve?