★ Official ROTATION Thread ★

(officially I do not have the power to make official threads, I don't think)

There have been many disparate discussions going on in several different threads revolving around the player rotations. I thought there might as well be a central thread devoted to this to allow everyone's arguments to be heard in a more organized manner.

I think that it is important that we agree upon two ground rules before we start.

1.) Neither JJ Redick nor Von Wafer can play point guard.

2.) No one is allowed to say anything good about Otis Smith, or bad about Stan Van Gundy.

Alright, great. I'll start because that would only make sense.

I only have one change that I would make to the rotation. Which is that I would prefer starting JJ Redick over Jason Richardson. And I already know that is contraversial with some of you, but, I have reasoning behind this idea.

As of right now Jrich is just floating around the perimeter waiting to magically become open for a three so that he can shoot a three. That is the extent of his involvement with the offense. Other than occasionally when the Magic intentionally abandon the offense to run a post-up for Jrich so that he can be quasi involved for one play.

JJ has a much better understanding of the offense and how to play within it and in a pro-active way.

Jrich is struggling to find his place in the offense as the 5th option amongst the starters, while you could literally throw JJ out on the floor with any lineup right now and he would know exactly what he needs to be doing.

So if you replace Jrich in the starting lineup with JJ it does a few things:

1.) It defines Jrich's role. The SG position in the Magic's offense can be kind of ambiguous. The offense runs through Howard, Turk & Nelson do all of the ball handling, the stretch 4 gets most of the shots. Generally speaking the 5th man has been a low volume shooting defensive specialist (Lee, Barnes). Jrich doesn't fit naturally into that mold. If you bring Jrich off the bench he instantly is allowed to fill a role that everyone is familiar with, the offensive spark off the bench role. Which would be a much more comfortable role for a volume shooter like Jrich to play. Being the featured scorer off the bench would be a much better fit than casting Jrich as an efficiency scorer alongside the starters.

2.) It would stabilize JJ's playing time. As seen in the Detroit game when JJ didn't play at all in the 3rd quarter a bench player's playing time can be erratic. Plugging JJ into the starting slot makes his playing time much more steady and predictable. And I think a cerebral player like JJ would excel given consistent minutes where he can make adjustments and not have to look over his shoulder.

3.) It would eat some backup SF minutes. There is a bit of a black hole at SF right now when Hedo goes to the bench. A big part of this is because the Magic's backup wing is Redick who cannot play SF due to his size. Jrich while not being able to play against the tallest and the strongest SFs in the league can certainly hold his own against most any of the backups.

4.) It gives the Magic a tight 8-man rotation. This makes Davis the backup frontcourt player, Jrich the wing, and Duhon the backup PG. Looking something like this:

Which I think gives the Magic more identity and helps define how they are going to play. Then Stan is free to depart from that core 8-man rotation as he feels necessary depending on match-ups and to keep the team rested during this condensed scheduled season.

That is my only thought.

I don't really think that Liggins, or Orton, or Harper, or Wafer need more minutes at this point. Q, Clark, and Hughes obviously will get spot minutes here and there based on need.