It too long but our team is finally back

[The-Stallion70]

It shouldn't have taken this long to get back but our team now appears to be back to competing and appear to be set to do that for a long time going forward since our best players are each only 22 years old or whatever and on rookie scale deals. The team found these overgrown guards Banchero and Franz and now we have our Core and chance at competing again.

This is kind of revisionist "look back" thread examining the difficulties that the team faced in returning to contention.

I still remember looking at the other bad teams back in 2013 like Utah and Philly and never imagined they would get to 50+ wins so much faster than we would.
Bad management is the no.1 thing that can mess up a team. Utah found Rudy Gobert, we found Devyn Marble and that guy Zimmerman.

The Magic may not get to 50+ wins this year technically but the structure of the league is different in that we are few years into Silver's plan aimed at creating more league parity and our 48 win record or whatever we end up with means almost the same thing within that context.

Still never thought Hennigan would trade Oladipo, the future all-NBA player whom we started the rebuild with, for a short-sighted package that eventually became Terrence Ross. It was an incredibly stupid and short sighted move and it was difficult to see that trade happen as a fan because it was obviously just a last ditch effort for Hennigan to save his job.

Ross was a good player but he was a career journeyman sixth man who didn't hold a candle to what Oladipo became in Indiana. It's on the Magic for not developing our players and letting them blossom somewhere else.

Jacque Vaughn? He just got fired again once another team realized he sucked. That was the coach we started the rebuild with and Hennigan gave him a longer leash than he deserved.

Fourth quarter Willie? Excuse me while I go Waterboard myself.

Overinvesting in Elfrid Payton was the single worst thing Hennigan did. Why moved off two guys who had all star potential in Oladipo and Sabonis in order to make way for the guy who didn't.

Elfrid's hair was an odd distraction and im still not 100% sure what to make of that. Why was he okay with that abomination on his head that literally created an additional, unnecessary obstacle as a basketball player? It was so bad that its literally not incorrect to state that it was unprofessional to have that kind of haircut as a basketball player.

Why we traded the up and coming Tobias Harris for two guys on expiring deals in Ersan Ilyasova and Jennings was another rediculous trade that set the team back. Tobias is a career 18 and 7 guy who we just signed, traded and then gave his money to Bismack **** Biyombo. It didn't take long for Vogel to realize that Bismack was so much worse offensively than Vooch that we were just better off starting Vucevic even though Vooch played defense like a Shaq standee more than half the time.

DJ Augustin had his best moments here. He nailed that shot to get that W over the eventual champion Raptors in the playoffs. He is probably right if he feels underpaid and slighted for his contributions when he was on a 4 year 29 million dollar deal and trash players like Jeff Green and Biyombo were getting paid way more. DJ played hard, probably overdribbled, but hey it's not like he's going to win games with his rebounding.

Weltman started the second rebuild with two blown picks, Isaac and Bamba.

Isaac's talent justified the pick but Bamba was just a draft combine marvel. You would ask yourself how could he not be a great player when he had a 7-10 wingspan? Well just watch the mfer that's how. Banba found his way onto TV commercials for local furniture stores and seemed much more interested in side activities than actual basketball. Congrats bombo you could have been making probably $20m per year or more if you applied yourself on the court instead of etching out a fraction of that as a venture capitalist.

Suggs has turned into a good player now that we know he's a Shooting guard but I still have PTSD from sitting through his extended tryout as a point guard his rookie year.

And then of course the Dwight Howard thing. The Magic had a really good team from 08-12 but as good as we were, we just weren't better than Boston or the Lakers during that time.

I thought Otis made a number of good efforts during that time to address our needs such as finding Vince Carter when we needed a perimeter scorer and outright signing Glen Davis just so that he couldn't defend Dwight in the playoffs. Glen Davis and Perk were two of the only two guys in the league who could handle Dwight by themselves and Boston had both of them. It was a sly move to just sign one of them ourselves as a solution to the problem of facing them in the playoffs.

Regarding Carter, we just found VC about 4-5 years too late.

Now im ready to see how our young group handles the playoffs and our slow, defensive style that hinges on halfcourt mismatches on offense should bode well for the postseason.

Let's get to the second round and give Boston or Milwaukee all that they cam handle dammit! Go Magic!

[The-Stallion70]

*It took*

[Magicman125]

Been a long long process of waking up from the Dwightmare, but here we are.