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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.

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.

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.

This won’t be popular to post, but I’m worried about Paulo’s lack of efficiency and development this year. Yes, he was hurt, but he’s really not playing winning basketball right now.

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.

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

Jalen and Cole back, Goga out for at least one more. First time Jalen, Franz and P have played together since October 30… I could cry! Let’s go!

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.

This was absolutely pathetic tonight. I have never seen a more pathetic shooting team in all of my years watching basketball. And it's been that way for years now. Also, not having a legit point guard to run the offense is a major problem. That too has been an issue for quite some time. All this defense being a top priority is fine and all. But if you don't have any kind of offense guess what? You ain't going nowhere. We are so easy to beat right now. All opposing teams have to do is just pack the paint and let us shoot 3's all night long. Then when we shoot 18 percent we hang our heads and stop playing defense. It seemed like they mailed it in tonight. I sure hope to see a better effort versus Boston on Friday night. As for what I think we will do at the trade deadline? Nothing of course. They'll say something like "once we get our injured players back, we'll be fine".

They've changed Franz injury designation from the injury to "Return to competition reconditioning" so he's probably a week or two away. I am so ready to have Paolo and Franz back man.

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.

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.

Our guy Janis Timma passed away. RIP

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

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.

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.

https://x.com/OM_AudioNetwork/status/1859849075350438263?t=c0IXPzrXXtgz7QQRJpFFMw&s=19 This is the best commentary on Franz winner... GOOSEBUMPS

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

I see no relation between playing for your national team and losing focus on your individual development. Franz was never a Go-to profile on any team he played for and probably never will be. But that has nothing to do with the German national team, or spending time away from the USA. There are even many examples of players who come back much improved after competing internationally. Almost all of the MVP candidates in recent years are foreigners and have participated every year or almost every year in international tournaments. Shay, Luka, Jokic, Giannis. I don't know how you can realize so clearly who has the natural talent to be Go-To and who can develop it and where geographically speaking. In my opinion it's just a matter of the type of player you are and the type of on-field personality you have. That can change a little bit, but it has nothing to do with what zip code you're in, but a lot of other things that probably no one can list that easily.

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.

no disrespect, but Markelle before TOS was one of the best prospects the NBA has seen. He had it all. He could do anything. Carrington shows flashes, but is nowhere near Fultz abilities

The max debate is kinda subjective. He got the max, the NBA is structured that players like this get a max. But in my definition he is not a max player, nor is Barnes, Tyrese Haliburton, Lamelo or others in that tier.. But it is what it is. He got the max and as a german i’m proud of him. Nobody ever earned this much money, which is so weird because half of the people here have never heard of Franz Wagner. in other news, our franchise player plays basketball today. It’s Germany versus France. Let’s see if he finally lives up to the hype. Imo, he’s a max player, he has to step up his game. Im not having another „he’s the german Luca Doncic discussion“ until he shows it!

So I know moves can still be made and trades are possible, but By the end of Paolo’s rookie year we knew we had a guy who could potentially be different and lead the team to the top. Since then we have had 2 free agency periods, 2 drafts, and 1 trade deadline. Can anyone honestly say Weltman has done anything in that time to raise the ceiling of the team (much less address the defects that were apparent this year)? I can admit that my timeline is probably not the one the front office is working on, but it is frustrating to see other teams with young stars make moves to improve those teams while our team sits in their hands and banks on just internal improvement

Or they didn’t. No one knows what they tried to do. Easily they could have just targeted KCP and everything else was Smoke and mirrors. all that is certain they had 50 million in cap space and they got a 10/2/2 guy and brought back marginal players. Wow good job. Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.