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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

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.

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.

Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner have scored 20+ points in nine straight games. That's the longest streak by a Magic duo in franchise history

https://twitter.com/cb1115/status/1907195417369948645 Zach Lowe going in on Mosley and the Magic.

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.

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.

Wasn't going to post about that game at all because I'm kind of sick of dwelling in the negativity but you know what. ***** Paolo Banchero. Dudes been ass most of the year. Our single best stretch of the season was when he was injured and Franz carried us. Now he's sulking in press conferences and his mum is tweeting about the coaching. Is the coaching great? Right now not particularly. But MFer was happy as hell with the same coaching when he was getting All Star nominations and winning ROTY and we've had one, admittedly cursed, down year and this dude and his family are crying? How's about grow the hell up and take some accountability? Be better on defense. Don't be one of the least efficient scorers in the game. And miss me with literally any excuse you've got for Paolo. Franz Wagner is in the exact same position, with the same work load and he plays better defense and he's more efficient and he impacts the game at a higher level. He even had the same exact injury and he recovered quicker. It's quickly become apparent that all the vibes weren't legit. It's easy to pull for each other when you're out performing expectations and winning but real friends, real good teammates, they pull together when times are hard. This team looks to have given the hell up. This feels closer to the end of something than the start of something. EDIT: probably taking a break from posting now I can't be bothered with talking about this team anymore.

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

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??

Same my guy but we need to stay the course. More and more fans are starting to wake up and realize this.

I know my response to your post is a week late. I don't claim to be a photoshop wizard, but I thought I would take a whack at it--play around. I know that some of the Magic players' pictures I used in this graphics were probably off the injured list by the time I completed this. Also, when I was doing the game thread starters, I posted a lot of pictures. Since toward the end of last season I have been getting messages that I have used all of the attachment space I am allowed. So, the graphic I designed might be deleted. Source: Designed by TMF Source: Original Movie

Controversial comment above. I will say this, though: our three-point shooting has been poor all year without regard to injuries. In 2025, I don’t see any team going deep into the playoffs if they are last in the league in three-point shooting.

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.

This organisation selected and developed Franz Wagner. Scouts said he might be a 3/4 tweener and as a rookie we played him at PG and SG at times (partly due to injuries) to develop his ball handling. The idea that we lucked into him when literally nobody was saying he was this good is wild. We also brought in his brother for free off the scrap heap in a move that is one of the more underrated moves they've made because it likely helped Franz settle to have his brother around and Mo Wagner became one of our important bench pieces at the exact same time. I think Mo Wagner was actually a culture setting move too. A guy who was almost out of the league who scrapped and clawed his way into being a legitimate NBA player. Everyone crying we can't trade WCJ because we have Goga but they ignore that Indiana literally gave up on Goga and this organisation brought him in and developed him so much so that he literally said this summer he wanted to stay because this organisation saved his career. Nobody wants to give any credit to the decision makers for that? A few years ago Rob Hennigan traded Oladipo and Sabonis for the corpse of Serge Ibaka, now we've got an actually good front office (not perfect by any stretch, nobody is) and people still want to complain about it when they've built the best team we've had in a long time. The people who want to trade WCJ, Jett and Cole for some random scoring guard who plays no defense are the same people who'd have traded Vuc for a packet of chips before he had his all star years and became valuable enough to net us the pick that became Franz. Fans aren't patient. But this front office is and usually it's proven to be worthwhile for them to be patient. Tyus Jones being the big point of contention for people is absolutely mind blowing. He's the starting PG on a team with a worse record than us who we just beat without our two best players.

Two torn oblique injuries has nothing to do with bad luck or coincidence. It has more likely than not, something to do with their training routines, workouts or whatever. They have to evaluate what is going on. But i do say this. It’s rare that both of your star players have the same unusual injury. That’s kinda bad luck.

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.

The only thing I agree with you is that we have two great young stars. But that doesn't imply that we won't make any transfers to improve the team, just for fear of messing with the dynamics. No team in our situation thinks like that. If there are players that don't fit the long-term project, or if there are players you think you can trade for others who are better, you do it. It's a long-term construction. Because no, we are not a contending team this year. We have one of the strongest young core in the league, we have a lot of potential, but if you look at 2 minutes of what usually happens in history, you will see that there are no teams that come out champions with their stars at 22 and 23 years old. It ALWAYS takes longer. Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about this team and I think that in many ways this year means a big step forward for the team. But to say that makes us a contender is simply a lie or a very silly analysis. I also don't understand the WCJ extension, it wasn't necessary and now we can't transfer him, when we probably would want to. What I see from Cole Anthony makes me think that a transfer would be better not only for the team, but also for him. Gary Harris should be out before the market closes, I've seen enough and would rather see his minutes get TDS, Jett or any player who can shoot and make threes. That being said, there probably won't be any trades in the end, at least not major ones this season, because that's not the FO's style.

What an unbelievable God damn win. Franz Wagner is a god damn super star. League better look out because we've got two of em.

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

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.

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.

That video is worth the watch. Wow! Franz looked amazing!!!

Seen the nickname: "Da Silva Surfer" kicking about and i like it lol

I wasn't rude at all, I was sincere. You already know what I think I believe, so the answer is pretty obvious. But if you really want a recap: - better team in the ovest last season already, almost reached the finals even if they're still so young, actually younger than us as we discussed in the past. While we were beated in the first round by a terrible team in a weak est playoffs (except Boston) - Everyone says that they're better than us due to SGA being older than our core and it's true, but forgot how they got him: with a mastermind move our FO doesn't even made in their better dreams. - made two moves in the offseason, and both are perfect to improve even more and correct their defects (you could argue that Harstein has been overpaid, but a lot of players are in FA, and he fits a need) without losing important assets. - When they had cap space, they used it actively to add even more assets than the ones they already have, instead of sleeping on those opportunities and handling overapays to players on short contracts just to fill the cap space as we've done in the last 3/4 years. - everytime they feel they need to improve, they pull the trigger without waiting, waiting, and waiting more. Our FO seem to rely on hopes, they rely in constant activity. They're basically one of the best teams on the NBA while being so young. And they've the most assets of any other team at the same time, arare combination. When the next super-super star is going to be available, they can beat everyone else with their package. As I repeated multuple times in the last months/years, if you want to win a title, being just good is not enough. You need to be great, not only with the roster, with training staff and FO decisions too. They're, we're not. Seems to me enough reasons to be envious.