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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

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.

moe wagner is the type of player i would never want to let go reminds me of how i liked this high energy players like prime bo outlaw, pietrus, gortat or darrell armstrong

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.

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.

No, they're only the reigning champions when healthy, they're not that great. There's a huge difference between always complaining and providing a different point of view from the "if we were healthy we would DESTROY them", or "if we had a good shooting game we would be 2-1". Like we're the only team having injuries, problems or bad shooting nights... seems like the others are always 100%, and we're always unlucky. I told you various time that I respect your faith in the team and the way you're a great fan, but you should avoid those "Give it a rest" and judging other fans just because they're pointing out real issues, or a different point of view. ;)

We don’t need to tank anymore. We already have two all stars to build around that we got from tanking. We just need good role players that can shoot and another guard that can play make. We can do that through trades. We also have two draft picks this summer. It should be obvious if we were healthy we would have a higher seeding. No more loser mentality.

Plus minus is a worthless stat. Franz was terrible last night and Paolo was great, anyone that watched the game would agree

Been posting for years while i drink. While i do feel ashamed a bit, 2012 to 2022 taught me not to accept the state of the team, just because of fandom. While constant negativity can be a real downer on a message board, we have to rally the fanbase to not accept mediocrity. I like the minds on this board, some have left that had more basketball knowledge then Weltman will ever have. We are sort of trained, made to believe that people in charge are competent. Has there ever been a time in history when it's more obvious that this is simply not true? I, we, this forum, fans of the Magic have been wondering when we are going to get a decent point guard for almost 15 years. That's a long time. We deserve better. Just to give you context i am a life long Dolphins fan and Chris Grier continues to make the same mistakes he makes every year. The owner is more about loyalty then winning. No, fandom isn't the end all be all but i would like a Dolphin or Magic title in my lifetime. I'm old.

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.

The only team above us in the East with an easier Strength of Schedule the rest of the way is Boston. The Bucks and Pistons specifically are both in the top half of the league in how difficult their remaining schedule is. If we take care of business we can finish as the 6 seed.

Otis, is that you? In all seriousness, I’m going to push back on this sentiment. There’s more to building an NBA team than 2 extremes. Nobody is upset that we didn’t make a deal to make a deal, but this team has a ton of obvious flaws that we could have made a one of a myriad of small moves to at least attempt to address.

What a letdown. So we're banking on health, growth, and cohesion? I'm not surprised but am very disappointed.

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

The point guard, or lack thereof, problem that some of us argued vociferously to fix over the summer now becomes more evident. We were told in response that “positionless “ basketball was the new norm and point guards were outdated. Apparently not. Aggravating that problem is this idea that our two stars should take 80% of the shots when the starting five is on the floor. Even if we had a good PG, we’d still be in trouble if we continue down that path. Like I said before, Goga only got 1 shot in 18 minutes last night. What happened to our pick and roll? Last year, even with Joe Ingles as slow and predictable as he was, we still managed to utilize the pick and role a heck of a lot better than we are doing now with better personnel. What gives??

Our core 3 is Paolo, Franz and Jalen. Anyone else on this team is tradeable. Saw a stat earlier today that among qualified players with at least 100 3 point attempts Jonathan Isaac is in dead last in the league in percentage and AB is 4th to last. The KCP signing was a failure. Jett was an awful, wasted pick. The Wendell extension was a terrible decision. We don’t have a single point guard on this roster to make life easier on our offense. We have one of the worst 3 point shooting teams of all time. And we have a GM who refuses to make any moves to address any of our weaknesses. It’s okay though, at least we’ve got plenty of guys smiling and laughing on the bench while getting boat raced by a bad team to cap off a horrible January of basketball. I’m legitimately angry..

One of the worst halves I can remember.

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.

Yeah, I agree. We can hide behind the injuries, and they suck and they’re playing a role in our floor, but none of the issues that are getting exposed are new issues for us. We’ve been asking for shooting and playmaking help for years and it still hasn’t happened. We have several vets that we continue to double down on that are constant disappointments. If our goal is championship, we need to build the team out better around our big 3. It’s kind of a clunky mess and it speaks volumes to me that our most impactful injury so far when it comes to our play and wins and losses has been Moe Wagner

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.

Boston had made 10+ 3-pointers in 52 consecutive games, and 126 of its last 128 outings. The Celtics were 8-for-33 tonight against the @OrlandoMagic.

Our guy Janis Timma passed away. RIP

And, call me crazy, I like it when basketball players play basketball.

We need a third scorer. Suggs is too inconsistent to fill that role, especially if the 3 ball isn't falling. He become a bull in a China shop when his shot isn't falling.

I don't agree at all. It seems to me that as at today, NY has a better team than the Magic. They are contenders, we are not. Contrary to the “optimistic” analysis, it seems to me that we are not at that level yet. There is a subtle difference between optimistic and blind. However, I expected us to approach today's game with a different attitude, because it was a sort of final.So far, the Knicks came out prepared to play a final today, we did not.

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.

Tristan needs to be in the rotation now properly!!

If you can't tolerate me at my: Ish Smith/Aaron Afflalo/Maurice Harkless/Andrew Nicholson/Nikola Vucevic* coached by Jacque Vaughn. You don't deserve me at my: Jalen Suggs/KCP/Franz Wagner/Paolo Banchero/WCJ coached by Jamahl Mosley. *Vuc doesn't necessarily deserve to be slandered.

because Franz had a terrible shooting season. I don’t think he’ll repeat that. We traded a terrible shooter in Fultz with a great shooter KCP And it’s safe to assume that AB and Suggs are improved shooters. Paolo has improved and had a whole summer of working on his shot! I’ll bet everything he’s a good shooter! So yeah, i expect us to be a good shooting team

Apparently the Magic haven’t embraced it because KCP is a shooting guard (or maybe small forward). Someone has to bring the ball up the court and start the offense for the Magic and by process of elimination, that’s Suggs. So I’m not sure what the guy above is talking about.

I've mentioned more than once that I would love Shroder on this team. Unfortunately we remain dedicated to playing without a true PG :(