Fanshots
Nik Vučević is in good company
Few players in Magic history have put together months quite like Nik Vučević has in December.
Five surprising teams
Nice little chunk on the Magic. Agree with the fact that Aaron Gordon should be the PF, but he needs to hit shots consistently.
The NBA at the first-quarter buzzer
Not a Magic-centric article, but there are a few interesting tidbits buried in there about Orlando. Namely, Fournier's camp was asking for "well north" of $10 million during the offseason and training camp, and apparently the plan to move Oladipo to the bench as a super sub was discussed last season before being implemented this season
Steph Curry is the Revolution
"In other words, if Golden State could replace its entire offense with just the bottom quartile of Stephen Curry’s 3-point attempts — without him ever being fouled and with them never collecting an offensive rebound — they would have the best offense in NBA history by a wide margin."... crazy
The Improved Offensive Execution of the Magic
RealGM breaks down Orlando's offense and points out the quick decision-making made by players, which has resulted in a much more fluid offense so far this season
Redoing the lottery part of 2014 NBA draft, with what we know now
Interesting to see Payton go 2nd and Aaron Gordon go 10th
Oladipo/Payton No. 9 Backcourt
Because argument and rage are the source of all modern entertainment, here are the top nine young backcourts in the NBA. Criteria: which backcourt would you want for success over the course of the next four seasons? Remember that I am infallible before you disagree..... No. 9: Elfrid Payton and Victor Oladipo This duo is lower than you might expect for a couple of reasons. The first is that Payton, though young, is a tremendously horrific scorer. His current True Shooting percentage is .435. He's averaging 0.86 points per shooting possession. League average is 1.06. It's a huge difference. The other is that Oladipo is probably not the best shooting guard in Orlando (Evan Fournier) and within three years might be the third-best shooting guard on this current roster (Mario Hezonja)! That's primarily because Fournier and Hezonja are neat -- Oladipo is real good, too -- but it doesn't inspire confidence in the future dominance of Payton-Oladipo. That's all.
Tom Ziller's The Hook, "Brandon Knight is turning into one of the NBA's best guards" Nov 18, 202520 years ago Penny beat Jordan
The Magic was the first of only ten teams to beat the Bulls that season.
