Two wins in a row for this magic team honestly feels as if Christmas has come early. Although injuries are starting to plague the team a bit especially with the hit to Augustine. The magic are showing real signs of life on offense in stretches. The thing that kills me the most is just the lack of awareness when it comes to closing minutes of quarters and especially games. Time management is something I’ve been bitching about all season, and although simply making shots kind of hides an inability to manage the clock, it’s still a glaring issue when you let a team get a couple different looks at making a game out of an already broken piñata 4 minutes before then.

The highpoint though, that no matter what ends up happening with this team, which I still hope the front office works shit out, they have a real piece for the future in Markelle. Being able to actually see his confidence grow, and watch as he gets his feel for what’s possible at the speed of the NBA is an absolute delight. He’s an athletic freak at the point guard position and it is guys like this in the NBA that can really be your centerpiece in something that’s very special. The magic just need to build their arrangement at this point.

Honestly, it almost feels illegal to be able to say this after a magic game, but with proof to back up I can’t get in trouble. THE MAGIC WON A GAME AND ALSO SHOT A 30% THREE BALL. If you don’t know how to raise averages, you throw up numbers that are higher than the averages and over time finally it goes up. Listen when you’re in the business of hoping for miracles for your sports team, I promise you that you can’t hang your hat on how big those miracles are or aren’t. We had some things fall our way real early, such as an all star not seeing the floor and the free throw advantage was only about 22 at half. But either way, finally the magic are able to handle whatever business was in front of them. Maybe the slow start can actually be shaken off because honestly I don’t care what people say, that Philly team is much better than they are letting on. This win should absolutely be a confidence booster. The wind in my sails from it is absolutely real and the defense keeps giving me confidence around our the wazoo. At this point obviously I think Fournier could still be hulled, but he helped me squeeze in the money last night on fan duel and get the team a win, so I’ll just chant it in my head for now.

Yesterday was a beautiful example of what magic basketball has been recently. I didn’t know it would take me actually being in the building before I had a little chance of perspective on things, but yesterday I can assure you opened my eyes more than you’d ever believe. As much as the guys aren’t consistent on the floor on either side of the ball, the defense can be incredibly smothering straight up. No one understands how exactly they want to guard a screen as they stagger off the screen as the help and if it’s any where close to a good screen then either defender who decides to go after the contest is immediately late. Really that’s the only glowing issue on defense is what’s crazy, MCW being forced into guarding guys like McDermott and stuff seems like it would be too much but I’m telling you he does a great job. On offense a set doesn’t hardly exist what so ever, every big just gets the ball dumped off to then once they cross half court and all the big knows to do is look for the curl hand off. Facing up is hardly ever an option. Setting is the name of the magic offense at this point, for the first three quarters they try to find every shot in under 8 seconds, but come about 4 minutes left in the 4th then suddenly the magic will use every second of the shot clock, especially if that means they won’t have any time left to finish the comeback.

At this point I’ve done enough stammering and getting to the point is easy. Fuck gutting the team as it stands, let’s just axe the coach. He isn’t a leader and he sure as hell isn’t learning anything from game to game that he keeps going. It’s the same god damn glowing issues I’m pissed odd about after every game, and if he can’t get anything to change then he needs to be the change.

Welp now that the magic have won again all seems well on the wonderful world that is the internet. Magic fans just seem so pleased with the Magic’s ability to have more points on the board than the other team. The team who consisted of a rookie point guard who was absolutely bullied into having probably the worst game of his early young career. The veterans of this Memphis grizzlies team have barely seen the light of their late twenties, and yes this team clawed it’s way back from being down close to 20 very early on, in the first quarter go down 20, at the end of the second quarter you look up and their down three. The magic shot, shot a total of 14 more free throws the grizz. Then finally what’s probably the greatest stat that’s going to speak to the failure of the magic all year, these guys still shot 12% worse from the three point line. Even with how easily they were getting the position needed inside to be very successful, this wonder team decided they can still find the time to just get up a stupendous amount of threes. It’s amazing this team doesn’t get it, we had guys knocking down jumpers at the free throw line so easily, and even better the curls and flashes in sets were working better than ever imagined. Still though we had guards getting in deep for penetration and once the light to the basket was gone, the ball was immediately kicked out to the arch for an absolutely no thought about it money ball to get heaved up.

The one real thing I can say that made my heart warm after last night was the consistency that the defense did show. Especially in the second half it felt like even when reserves shuffled into the game that the hard nosed ball first pressure was still there. If the magic can use their ability to be so overwhelming then I think there is a good shot that they can give themselves to be in games.

They shoot themselves in the foot though when they reserve a chunk of 28~ shots to an area of the floor though that they consistently hit like 25% of their shots from.

I am no cynic. I am more than reasonable in fact I believe, I did nothing but keep having to bring up disabled dogs in my mind simply because of the fact that I kept getting close to creaming my pants with the way the magic were playing offense towards the basket, not offense that ended away from it. The Magic were pretty smooth too and were doing a wonderful job of maintaining a lead for the first half while weathering the storm that the Mavs offense would produce very couple of minutes. John Isaac and AG when he needed to help over were absolutely fantastic on Kristaps. That is when being great defensively is effective because the star was unable to get anything going, all while our offense still was showing getting the cylinders pumping and hitting. Now, what I am is someone who lives in the moment and can keep track of things, and does anyone in this world not think I still realized that we shot an embarrassing 25% from the three point line? Aaron Gordon for the most part is really hurting us, even though yes is putting up some points on the board, but at this point with the horribly low efficiency and turn over problem, he probably isn’t the exact offensive piece I had really thought going into the season. Ideally I believed AG and Vucci could just run a pick and roll that started about 19 feet out and worked straight down the middle that allowed JI to sneak to the opposite short corner, and allowed the other two guys on the floor to at least get a decent look on what should be slowly closed out on three. At this point though I am not sure what Vucci is so pissed off about, but it is almost impossible for anyone to even get him off the three point line, and that is really starting to become a problem at this point. I don’t hate augustine coming off the bench, but without being partnered with someone like TRoss it is really really hard to get a consistent heartbeat. FIrst time was this year though where it has seemed the bench is the actual problem, and the +/- reflected, so I can’t be too upset about that as they have done a lot of weight pulling as far as keeping games close goes for the most part. If Steve is actually going to show signs of making change and getting people to work towards their strengths instead of just running in the back of the pack of the league who likes to shoot threes then for the most part I’ll probably only bitch about fournier. If these dicks just keep getting up the shots then honestly it’s going to be a shit storm of a season ahead of us.

Welp, I’ll be god damned if when the cards were turned over last night what in the fuck were we blessed with in our hand? Two fat ass old dusty spades that lead to the same mind numbing result. The internet has one damn reason why the Magic could possibly trust the guys they have and maybe things could get righted, and that reasoning comes from the fact the magic are rated fairly high in defense, interesting enough stat though, your defense becomes useless when when 7 times out of the 10 that you do get a stop, you just run down the court and take a low percentage shot that helps the offense in no way. It’s amazing too because guys are working hard on the boards and have done an okay job or controlling them, it’s just that no one wants to take care of the ball, and they sure as shit can’t put in the hole very consistently. Only 4 guys from the night even had positive +/- and too he honest with you, two of those guys did it without even contributing like they should. At this point, even if the magic were to try and trade pieces and work them, they are worth 75 cents on the dollar probably and would probably be an even bigger slap to the face on the return. At this point though, I’m ready to go down that magic avenue where players get shipped off and go develop into production players in a matter of months. This batch of guys I have to sit down and watch every night it just going to start to give me second thoughts about why I even like basketball, and it’s too early in a wonderful NBA season to ever have those thoughts. I just hope to god the Magic front office have some sort of plan ahead of themselves and in mind because at this point running it back for the rest of the schedule with how we are going might as well just turn into a tank. Guys are slow as shit in transition, we have 100 million shooting 20 some percent on nights, and we have young forwards who refuse to learn how to effectively get to the basket consistently and use their physical gifts to help them. Dj Augustine off the bench scores fairly well, the offense just looks like a stop motion animation film of chaos around the main character. Overall, I’m not trying to go insane at such a young age, and I damn sure believe if the guys are playing, there should be guys in the front office who are working all the same.

Last night was the first time I would ever say the magic looked at least competent when it came to trying to have offensive continuity. The only issue is that through the sets, the same issues are still there than when things break down there isn’t someone who’s gonna demand the ball and be a consistent force. Fournier tries but a lot of times unless he’s able to get away with a lot of pushing the shot he creates has no daylight. AG isn’t bad for the team when he wants to he aggressive and attack the rim, but consistently he is standing around the arch and he doesn’t have a consistent set of moves that can get him that 22 feet quickly and easily. Last night they showed signs of life with Vucci setting some verticals off the wing that allowed him to float into the middle of the lane and make some catches there, but still until he’s ready to be looking to do that at all times so the defense has to commit bodies ready to get inside and disrupt him, the wings are just able to be helped out on at all times. As funny and great as it may be while I’m joking about trading everyone, and dumping pieces as the season looks so gloomy 5 games in, but honestly at this point we don’t have a broad enough offense in this NBA to be effective at a high rate. Defenses are incredibly fast at this point, and communication between guys when it comes to guarding the Magic’s need to have their wings attack the basket for them to be effective on that end is just something that isn’t hard to be prepared for. Honestly, if I had to go pound for pound comparisons in the NBA we have the worst catch and shoot team. It’s no wonder we watch the Magic night in and night out have those turn around passes to the arch be closed out on so slowly because 33% of the time it’s going in. Honestly I’m living with the 67% if I’m any other team. Especially when you know the magic only have one or two guys at most who are going to be aggressive on the offensive board just solely because of how bad the transition defense is. At this point if you aren’t getting what I’m trying to say, this is another reason why the magic are fucked. No one who even remotely gives a hooray for for this team seems to be able to notice how bad it is that we keep getting left for shots that are bricked. People really think eventually they will start falling instead of recognizing these aren’t the shots this bumass team needs. At this point, there wouldn’t be enough sets in the world to get the guys on this team the looks they would need to be successful and honestly it wouldn’t hurt the magic to just try and find some different pieces, at least could shake up the bench rotation if you don’t want to mess with the wings. And forever in Orlando we will have to live with #Fournaway deep in our hearts.

As someone who has been enjoying collecting my thoughts after magic games and writing about them, possibly spinning something that has my opinion added or throwing in something that might be what I like to see done. The thing I didn’t know that I was getting into when I started doing this with the Magic was the fact that the Magic were just going to be doing the same dumbass stuff all season and I was essentially just going to be able to write 82 blogs before the season started talking about how the Magic have no idea at all how in the world to get shooters off the 3 point line, and when they get the ball in their hands they do not have a single person on the team who can slow the team down and work an offense through any sort of progression work that would get them anywhere worth anything. I could have just sprinkled in around 38~ wins in those blogs and praised Vucci a couple of times and I honestly probably would have looked like a more engaged fan than what I am actually going to look like this season. This team is absolutely amazing in which when you ask for guys with consistency, you do not have to look any further to see such an incredible example of it. The glaring issue when it comes to that fact is that is that they are constantly looking like dipshits on defense with hands in pockets that probably got specifically put on the jerseys so the guys looked more like they were comfortable, not that they didn’t know what they were doing. So what if the schedule is tough to start the season, If you aren’t going to show any signs of improvement game to game in the glaring issues, and you aren’t going to be able to keep games close hardly at all what in the hell do you have to look forward to? At this point the best option the magic have is that the next road trip has some turbulence and the plane jumps so bad that everyone hits their head and it rejogs their goddamn ability to place basketball.

The magic might be the slowest out of the gate team of any team that could be good in the nba right now. They took almost three quarters last night before actual ball movement started to be seen. Last night the magic did a lot better job of making sure not to force things on offense as quickly as I think they are realizing they’d rather not play defense, but AG’s shot feels like it lost some consistency this season and that’s something that I really need to be changed around. As someone who I kind of expected to come in an be someone who’d be an off guard playmaker seeing the ball a lot and getting a lot of different ways to showcase his wide skill set, but to be honest, if anything it seems as if his usage percentage has gone down a little bit. We are going to need someone on the wing who is going to be a threat to catch the ball and go score almost at will if you want to be successful, and as much as I’d like to say that is Tross, for one he probably could use a little bit more burn, but two I think he’s been having to watch too much Fournier and the two guard position for the magic right now is in a weird spot where sure you might get SOME buckets but for the most part it’s going to be inconsistent, there isn’t going to be one real place on the court where you know for sure it’s going in, and yet at times either one of those guys will stop cutting and slow down getting back after the ball doesn’t swing enough in their eyes. Although they won, the Magic need to wake up and start taking care of the business in front of them at all time.

At this point in the season, obviously way way too early to judge much as far as player development or expectations, but the one thing I think is perfectly fair game to harp on and to ask for some god damn change is how the coach is allowing the offense to be ran. Notice I just mentioned offense because at this point, If we’ve got the size and the length that we do and we already don’t want to stay in front, there’s gonna be no hope for seeing much improvement as a defensive unit. The thing that pisses me off so much about the offense at this point is that everything is so incredibly rushed, from the screens being set to the god damn shots being taken. Simply working the ball and the clock doesn’t exist with this magic team for some mind blowing reason and what’s hurts the most when it comes to those quick shots is no one wants to get back and stop the ball, off a lot of our misses we are just beat down the floor and generally getting scored on by a simple two man transition set. Clifford needs to get the point guards seeing the floor, and especially need the ball out of the off guards hands early on in the possession. T Ross can get a bucket yes, but it doesn’t have to be looked at getting with 18 seconds left on the shot clock. With the pace we are on, we are going to be on the defensive end 3x more than the offensive end and the only time guys want to get up on this team is when the ball is hitting their palms. For all the high expectations and for all the good things that came out of the summer, the magic couldn’t possibly be dragging their face across the ground as they get the season started anymore than they have been so far.