Overarching 2024 goal, what should it be?

[pepe1991]

Franz' net rating as a rookie was -4.9, and Paolo's was -4.2. For a young rookie, that's about the best we could hope for.


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I'm not sure you understand what net rating is and how it works.

Paolo, Franz ( you mentioned Giddey as well) played on teams that are horrible. By design, being on teams that have terrible W-L column, their net rating is terrible, and majority of players, if not all, who play active rotation, have terrible net rating.

Only exception to this rule is if player XY is starter, on bad team, but they are exclusively bad because their bench sucks ( or he is bench player, and they are exclusively bad because of starters).

This is why Scottie Barnes had as rookie +1,8 net rating and as sophmore he had +3,2.

Raptors bench was just horses**** to the point of no return. Starters were playing near 40 mpg to even be in games.



So talking about net rating without any context behind it is simply waste. Walker Kessler, a rookie, had second best net rating on Utah team, and him and Lauri were far away from anybody else. On other side of a spectrum, Banchero was one of the worst Magic players net rating vise and by far worst starter.

Context for all this is very simple one. Magic weren't good team. Only Franz Wagner menaged to have positive net rating among serious rotation players. Issue is that people somehow convinced themselfs Magic were " close to playin" while having 34-48 record. I already said 2 days ago, people make it sound like play in is hard to make. You literally have to be better than 4 out of 14 teams to get there and in most cases among 4 you need to "beat", 2 or 3 of them don't even compete to get there. If playin concept existed in past, we would have teams who were "playin " teams with 18 to 20 games below .500.

Matter of fact, Wizards made playin with 22-47 record during first play in tournament in 2020, things got so dumb and pointless that Hornets surpassed them in standings -by not playiny play-in tournament.

[Last Guardian]

Looks like Suggs is making everyone look good. If he wasn't always injured, he'd be our top guard by a long way.

If Suggs and Isaac both play 70 games, we could make some noise.

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Yeah, Suggs clears for sure

Which is strange because Suggs offense, while improved, was still pretty bad. I think it comes down to how his energy and competitiveness really infects the team. And of course, defense is part of net rating and he clearly helps there. Same situation with Isaac years back. We were so fantastic defensively when he was on the court it didn’t really matter how average his offense was.

[Last Guardian]

I see Black this way:

Physically he has the size to defend 1-3 and some 4.

Offensively he has point guard/facilitation skills, and he is a reluctant scorer who’s shooting is a project.

He’s essentially our version of Draymond/Simmons/Iggy/Dyson Daniels/etc. Put them in whatever position you want and call them what you want, the way they best help on offense is passing and playmaking.

I love Black and his archetype, but his game isn’t the easiest fit to imagine with Paolo.

Black is 6’6 200lbs soaking wet. He’s not defending 3’s and certainly not 4’s in the NBA. Our own team is a pretty good example…is Black guarding either Franz or Paolo successfully…I highly doubt it.

Black is great insurance if Markelle gets injured again. If he doesn’t, I don’t expect Black to play much. He doesn’t offer much other than defense at either guard position and we have Suggs who is better at that assignment already.

[MagicMatic]

Problem with that is fact that if you remove Black from ball, you get Okeke/ Iwundu player.

6'6 SF who has no insticts to cut, can't spot up, probably can't beat his man off the dribble if he is defended by person of his size so by default he will spend most of the time standing like traffic cone in corner.

This is why i refered to him as out Scottie Barnes. Scottie Barnes is esencially usless if he isn't inolved in action where he touches the ball. Because without ball, he is just averaged size dude without single clear basketball skill.

Like I said, his minutes will come from the pg, sf and sg position. Not limited to just the pg position.

So the argument about him finding playing time is not really a problem imo. There’s a lot of minutes for him to play.

In the literal sense, yes you’re right.

If the Magic want to get him on the floor, they have a variety of options at their disposal beyond him playing point guard.

But the point is, just because the Magic *can* get Black on the floor at other spots doesn’t mean that’s actually a good thing for him or for the team as a whole.

Lineups that featured Fultz/Anthony at the same time last season were absolutely terrible because neither guy is effective in an off ball role.

Black doesn’t project to be all that effective in an off ball role either because of his lack of shooting.

It’s clear to me that this is another “evaluation year”. I say that because the roster still doesn’t make sense and there are too many guys and not enough minutes with clearly defined roles.

You can see the outline of what the FO is trying to do and it appears as clear as day:

Black -6’7
Howard -6’8/9
Franz - 6’9/10
Paolo - 6’10/11
xxx

I don’t factor Carter in as core because I’m making the huge assumption that the last piece to the puzzle is a defensive anchor to pair with Paolo that can alleviate the lack of rebounding and at the rim presence. Carter is an underrated player, but he isn’t that guy.

They are attempting to build a jumbo team that mismatches every position.

All of this being said, I don’t necessarily like the idea of sacrificing the long term for quick short term satisfaction. I get the idea that you want to get Franz and Paolo comfortable with winning and the playoffs, but how does that help them in reality if 2/3 of the starters won’t and shouldn’t be here in 2-3 seasons?

They can have Black earn minutes behind 1 guy but not 2. Playing him at SG or SF just because he can doesn’t really help him if the long term plan is to be a lead guard where he is a mismatch nightmare.

[Residual-Heat]

Win 40+ games.

[eyriq]

I still can't believe we literally benched AB and G-Leagued Jett.

[RookieStar]

I still can't believe we literally benched AB and G-Leagued Jett.

But we also cant believe we are 45+ wins... or near it

[eyriq]

I still can't believe we literally benched AB and G-Leagued Jett.

But we also cant believe we are 45+ wins... or near it

Yeah, whatever works. Also, AB is in the second most played lineup. Not all bad

[jezzerinho]

I still can't believe we literally benched AB and G-Leagued Jett.

Because the FO has to tread a line between developing their stars (Suggs, Paolo, Franz, JI) while theyre on their cost controlled deals, versus developing everyone equally.

2 years ago, AB and Jett would have had way more playimg time because the team was at a different stage.

But now, the priority of teaching our top guys to win before they go on max or near-max deals is higher than developing our newbies.

And frankly, this is good for everyone - even the newbies. We're always lauding team like the Heat, Nugs or Celts who pick guys at the bottom of the 1st round but manage to turn them into good role players at worst. They do it by making the kids earn their place and by giving them very limited, specific roles that they can handle.

Pretty much what we've done with Black.

With Howard, i guess they felt he'd benefit more from minutes than a small role, so they gave him a chance to play a lot in Osceola.

So, I'm fully on board with how their treating the rooks. Its paying off now for Suggs/PB/Franz and co and down the line itll pay off for the rooks too.

[pepe1991]

I still can't believe we literally benched AB and G-Leagued Jett.

Because the FO has to tread a line between developing their stars (Suggs, Paolo, Franz, JI) while theyre on their cost controlled deals, versus developing everyone equally.

2 years ago, AB and Jett would have had way more playimg time because the team was at a different stage.

But now, the priority of teaching our top guys to win before they go on max or near-max deals is higher than developing our newbies.

And frankly, this is good for everyone - even the newbies. We're always lauding team like the Heat, Nugs or Celts who pick guys at the bottom of the 1st round but manage to turn them into good role players at worst. They do it by making the kids earn their place and by giving them very limited, specific roles that they can handle.

Pretty much what we've done with Black.

With Howard, i guess they felt he'd benefit more from minutes than a small role, so they gave him a chance to play a lot in Osceola.

So, I'm fully on board with how their treating the rooks. Its paying off now for Suggs/PB/Franz and co and down the line itll pay off for the rooks too.

It's summer of 2005, my friend and I are playing basketball , just entering teenage years. My friend complains that he is not playing much for his team. I conviced him to tell to his coach.
next day he returns angry. I ask him what happend.
He said his coach told him : wanna play more? Get better.

We spent next 2 months playing every f*** day during summer and heat, it's not like we really "developed" skillset but man, we could run for days. Literally one night we went on 13 km run ( 8 miles) . And he indeed, months later did play more, he wasn't really much better, but stamina & conditioning we menaged to achived helped him.