EP. 523 – Pencils Down – Orlando Magic Podcast

EP. 523 – Pencils Down – Orlando Magic Podcast

This is the Sixman Show, an Orlando Magic podcast with your hosts Kevin Tucker and Jonathan Osborne covering all things Magic Basketball by fans for fans. Go Magic. What’s going on Orlando Magic fans? You guys are back with the Sixman show. Today is June 2nd, 2005, my mom’s birthday. Happy birthday, Mom. Jonathan Osborne here as always, joined by my co-host and good friend Kevin Tucker. Kev, what’s up? What’s up, man? Here we are, June. Hard to believe. That means at the end of this month, we’ll be halfway through 2025, which is always crazy, but time flies when you’re having fun. Um, yeah, I’m doing pretty good. Uh, excited to see the NBA Finals this Thursday. The matchup you’ve been waiting for. I know you’ve been so pumped for this. Pacers Thunder, just like the entire NBA world wanted. Uh, how are you doing? Indiana, Oklahoma City, baby. I’m sure Adam Silver is thrilled. Yes. And David Stern is is rolling in his grave. I can’t I can’t believe that Adam Silver let this happen. Here’s here’s the thing. If you want to ride the conspiracy theory, you know, it feels like maybe they got a pendulum, right? And it swings different ways. So, the the Luca trade and Dallas getting number one for Cooper Flag swings this way and they’re like, “Whoa, hold on. We got to do something crazy to throw off the scent. Let’s put Oklahoma City and Indiana in the finals together.” No, I’m kidding. But, uh, no, you’re not. I’m not kidding. If if nothing else, it was, hey, like this time we kind we kind of can’t step in. We just have to let whatever’s going to happen happen because if we do step in and make it obvious, you know, you can’t have three earthshattering events in the span of five months. You just can’t. That’s so funny. I’m excited for the finals. I really am. I think Indiana actually has a shot. I know everyone’s saying it’s Thunder and four or five, but I think Indiana can make it interesting. I I know it’s a bias, but yeah. As much as it would annoy me to see Indiana win it, it would annoy me way more to see Oklahoma win it. That’s right. That’s right. Go. Stop saying that. They got to they got to do away with that, man. The only kind of solace I would be able to find in that would be our friends over at the uncontested. You know, our our Blue Wire kind of sister podcast over there that covered the Oklahoma City Thunder. I would be happy for those guys. Everything else about it would suck. Seven ways to Sunday. Yeah. No, thank you. I’ll pass on that. But yeah, give me Indiana hopefully. Correct. So, uh, we are going to conclude our grading series here as we’ve now done the forwards, the bigs, the guards. We’re going to group the coaching and the front office together. So, Jamal Mosley, and then Jeff Welman, Anthony Parker, Pete Dlesandro, you know, that entire team over there. Um, before we get to that, I’m trying to think if there’s really any kind of housekeeping things. Like, shirts have all been uh labeled and uh shipped. Just need to drop them off at the post office, so those will be out. Appreciate everyone’s patience. Um, yeah. Uh, what else is there? I don’t really think there’s much. There’s just not really been a ton of magic news there. Maybe this week we’ll get something. Who knows? Yeah. But so far, nothing. Yeah. something this week or I mean you know the draft is I mean we’re this week it’s three weeks away from the draft so that’s exciting you know could be moves made between now and then that’s the thing I I will address this one thing we’ve seen a lot you know in our Patreon Discord or on Twitter asking like can trades happen for the 28 teams that are not left in the playoffs you absolutely can make trades right now most of the time that’s not going to be beneficial to a lot of teams they want to wait until, you know, the the the NBA calendar officially turns to next season, all those kinds of things. But it’s not impossible. We’ve seen it happen before. So, a trade could happen any moment, but more than likely, it’s going to be after the conclusion of the finals, uh, as we go into the NBA draft. Um, and as I’ve said many times, I expect if a deal is going to happen with the Magic, it’s going to be on draft day or maybe the couple days before. So, should be very interesting times indeed. One thing I think is happening this week that I know everybody is going to care about is there is a new series that’s coming out on Apple TV, I believe on the 4th, starring Owen Wilson, uh, called Stick. It’s a Oh my gosh, the season. Okay, maybe this is the trailer, but I’m seeing a 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s an Apple TV series, so I kind of have a little bit hope kind of held out for that. So, I’m excited for that in a couple of days. The golf one. It’s a golf one. That’s why you say everybody’s excited for it. Yeah. Yeah. I see. Um well, the other thing is June 25th is Happy Gilmore 2 comes out, which I don’t know if you’ve seen the trailer for that. It looks terrible. I’ve never seen, but I love Adam Sandler. You’ve what? Yeah, I knew you were going to love that. We talked about this once before, but yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s a bit of a personality uh issue that you’re going on there. Yeah, for sure. Um but yeah, that’s going to be terrible, but I’m going to choose to just, you know, enjoy that anyway. Yeah. Other than that, yeah, I don’t really have anything else. So, um let’s talk Jamal Mosley. So, Jamal Mosley in his fourth year now as Orlando Magic head coach. He has coached 328 games to this point, Kevin. His record is 144 and 184. So, that’s a winning percentage of 43.9. And through 12 playoff games, he is 4 and8. And his winning percentage, there have been 14 head coaches in Orlando Magic history. Have you already looked at this or do you have a guess of where Jamal Mosley ranks all time? Yeah, I saw this at the end of the season. Name everyone above him. I saw this at the end of the season and I cannot remember. I I cannot remember what the number is. Um, you had to I I just give me a guess then. Six. You looked it up, you dog. No, I didn’t. Is that right? Sixth. Let’s go. Let’s go. Okay. Where would you rank him all time in wins? Um, I mean, he’s been head coach longer than a lot of guys. So, is it high? Is it above or below six? I’m not telling you that. Five. He’s fourth. Fourth. Okay. All right. You You Okay. You knew the first one. You lied. It was a guess. I promise you fifth to throw me off the No, no, no, no. This is not the NBA. I’m not This is not rigged. No, bro. That was a legit guess. And a very good one at that. I’m patting myself on the back. Let’s go. Yeah. He He’s fourth. He is 27 games behind Doc Rivers who’s third. And then he’s got 33 on Matty Guus and he’s got almost 50 on Steve Clifford who’s sixth. Honestly, as I went through this, I was a touch surprised that he was already as high in in some of those categories because his first, you know, couple of years, like we were almost as as bad as as bad gets. towards the bottom. Usual suspects, Jacques Vaughn, Chris Gent, who only coached in, you know, 18 games. Uh, Frank Vogle down towards the bottom. James Barago down towards the bottom. Yeah, I was um I guess I don’t know why. I know the teams were so bad, but like Steve Clifford was just a a better coach than to end up with as bad of of a record as as he ended up with here. But so yeah, anyways, Jamal Mosley sixth all time in win percentage. He’s fourth all time in wins with 144. I was going to ask really fast in losses. He’s third in losses. Do you have that list still in front of you? I do. What is How many more does he have to go to be number one? More wins. Yeah. 123. All right. So, two seasons. We’ll get it. I’m just kidding. If he’s here, if he’s here for three more seasons, he will be the winningest coach in Orlando Magic history. For sure. That’s cool. Got a ways to go with the win loss percentage. You’ve got uh SVG up there with a 65.7. Got Richie Autobio just 33 games, but 63.6. Brian Hill 58.2. Chuck Daly 56.1. Then Doc Rivers at 50.4. I think Jamal Mosley, he may be able to surpass. No, he’s not going to he’s not going to get over 50% this year. He would probably also need another two to three years to jump up into the top five all time in in terms of of win percentage. But I mean, this year he would have a chance to jump into third all time in playoff wins, but that’s not what we’re here for. We’re not here to talk about his the totality of his Magic coaching career so far. Yeah. We’re here to talk about this year in which the Magic finished 41 and 41. And just like all these other conversations that we’ve had, you cannot have this conversation and you cannot give Jamal Mosley a grade without considering the injuries. Now, unlike the other grades that we’ve given out, we can’t really knock Jamal Mosley for guys being hurt. He isn’t the head trainer or anything like that. he can only put out there what he has. So, considering all of that, and I know we’re both going to get into the details of how, you know, we grade, I think with players, it’s a little bit easier to like have the conversation and give a grade. With Jamal Mosley, I think this is going to be more of a back and forth with you and I potentially. So, all things considered, with Jamal Mosley, I give Jamal Mosley a solid B for the year. Yeah. I think for me, you talk about the injuries, I can’t, and I know there are a lot of Magic fans on social media that are maybe not a fan of Jamal Mosley, or maybe this season made them less of a fan of Jamal Mosley, but you I cannot look at this season and look at Jamal Mosley’s job that he did this year without thinking about if you told me in October or September that Mo was going to miss 52 games, Jaylen was going to miss 47 games, games. Powell was going to miss 36 games and Fron was going to miss 20. You tell me that in September, October, I say we are cooked. I’m saying we’re in the lottery. Um like max 35 wins max, maybe even less. Probably less. So to take all of that into account and and by the way some of those games Paulo and Fron’s out together at the same time and yet this team ends up 41 and 41 that by itself amazing. You add to it some of those wins during that stretch should have never happened. They should have never ever we had some of the most miraculous wins in my opinion in this in the entire history of this franchise. some really really fun stuff and and I know it’s a handful of them but still that’s a handful of games and like the the conversation for that has to start with me it starts with Jamal Mosley right to instill the belief in these guys to pull the right strings and you know pull the right levers at the right time and does he get it right all the time no he doesn’t are there things that I don’t particularly like about how he coaches or some of the rotations or of course he’s not perfect but this team went 41 1 and 41, missing so many guys to injury for so long. And to me, that starts with the head coach. It does. The same goes the other way around. If this team was fully healthy and the team underachieved, that’s on the head coach. To me, it it can be more than that, but you have to at least start the conversation with the head coach. So, the fact that the opposite happened, we missed guys, we were 500, I think that’s great. I also can’t grade him without talking about the playoffs. You know, I think his playoff per performance, considering who we had was all right. Wasn’t great, but it was all right. I think you had three and a half. I mean, really, honestly, the middle three games super competitive. First half of game one competitive. First half of game five was actually competitive, too. I know it ends up in a as a blowout, but that’s a, if I remember right, a one possession game at the half. Yeah. Until Tony Brothers stepped in. Well, that’s true. I forgot. Yeah, the fouls in the third quarter. Yeah, you’re right. Um, so you admit that it was BS. No, I’m reminded of how you felt about the the game five calls. Um, so I can’t give him anything less than a positive grade. All those things combined, despite him not being perfect, I I’m definitely going to give him some shade of a B. You know, some people thought was funny on the last episode. Um, I’m going to give him I I I’ll match you. I’ll match you. I’m going to say just a solid B. Could have been better. Could have been a whole heck of a lot worse. And to not pander, but like kind of address the people on social media, and I do think it’s like the loud minority in this case. Yeah. Of people who are like, “Fire Jamal Mosley. He’s garbage.” Like the the dumb things that get said. The thing about the criticisms of Jamal Mosley, the extent to which some people take them, I think is a bit excessive and unwarranted, but the criticism at its foundation is not unfounded. Mhm. There there are fair criticisms to be made of Jamal Mosley. Yeah. And so as much credit as we have to give him for the way that this team played in, you know, November and in December with a ton of guys out, we also, in my opinion, have to give him a little bit of a knock of how this team performed when we were I don’t want to say I guess mostly healthy. you were missing Jaylen and Mo, but having your two best guys back and I know that they were not playing the best, but like we were having to question like fight and effort and like focus and attention to detail in a lot of those games during that stretch. And is it fair or unfair to to put some of that on Jamal Mosley? I I I don’t want to put all the blame on him, but I I do think he has to have some of the blame it for that stretch that this team had. And then when we talk about some of the other stuff, the rotation stuff, I feel like he’s mostly good. There is some questionable things at times like the rare instances where you’re not staggering Paulo and Fron like the the minutes that neither one of those guys on the floor is always a bit of a head scratcher. And then there are other guys, and I’m not going to rehash our other grades that we went through, but if you’ve been locked into this team for the majority of the regular season, you know who I’m referring to, but there are guys at times where you’re asking, why is this person on the floor? They’ve just made, you know, three to four bad plays in a row. They’re clearly submarining this game. Why are they still on the floor? The timeout issue is still an issue. It has gotten better, but it still shows up way too frequently where a team goes on a run. You know, where the Magic might have 11 or 12 point lead, all of a sudden a team goes on a 10-2 run and they tie the game up or they take the lead before there’s a timeout. or the Magic are trailing by four or five and a team will hit, you know, two threes in a row, get a turnover, hit a layup and and now they’ve gone on a, you know, 12 to four run and now it’s like a 12 to 13 point game before a timeout is called. So those kind of things, although he has gotten better, still an issue, right? Some of the offensive stuff like, you know, the sidelines out of bounds stuff, some of the like after timeout, you know, like the set plays, especially at the end of games. Now, going the other way with it, because again, there’s so much criticism out there. I I do feel like we have to combat some of that. That just really isn’t true. People claim that Jamal Mosley doesn’t call plays. You’re you’re not watching the same game. If if you’re seeing these guys through go through like multiple actions, whether it’s a, you know, a dribble handoff or like some kind of back screen or, you know, a pick and roll, like players aren’t just thinking of that stuff. They’re not out there playing pickup basketball. If it’s not ISO, some type of set most likely has been called. So Jamal Mosley is constantly calling plays. Now, we could sit here and we could argue the efficacy of those sets and and calls and plays that the Magic are running. And I think Jamal Mosu was asked a question at the exit interviews after the season ended in terms of whether or not he would consider bringing a more like offensiveminded coach, you know, onto the staff to help the offense. and he didn’t say yes, but he said, “We’re going to leave no stone unturned,” I believe was the direct quote. So, I think maybe that wasn’t something that happened during the season, but I think we all would have preferred that that would have been addressed like that part of the coaching staff would have been addressed going into the season. How much of a difference is that going to make? Do you win three more games, four more games? Like you look at the standings like that makes a difference in seating, right? Um, but so like Jamal Mosley, we were preaching and screaming from the rooftops in November and December that he should have been in the coach of the year conversation and consideration because he was making gold out of rat crap at the time. Like we had nothing going for us and this team was just finding ways to win games. And when you have a lack of talent and you’re able to squeak out wins like that, it comes down to coaching. it comes down to culture, both of which Jamal Mosley is largely responsible for. But then on the other hand, you have that really rough rough stretch in January and February and then these other you know flaws uh you know to this point of his career that although they are getting better and have greatly improved I would argue since his first season um there are still things that you want to see him improve on. And I I I am curious of like, okay, how much longer is like the timeout thing going to be an issue? Like going into your fifth season as a head coach, that’s something that you would hope has been figured out to this point. I could honestly I could be talked into a B+ for Jamal. Uh I think a B is fair. Just some of the things that we’re mentioning here, I can’t get to an A, but yeah, I think a B is totally fair. Yeah, I want to kind of go back to what you’re talking about when it comes to the play calling. Um, first off, you’re right. There are plays that are called throughout the game. You know, this idea there are no plays called is, you know, just not accurate. I think what most Magic fans find the hardest is it feels like in close games, we go to, again, just feels like iso ball very early. Like a lot of teams like they they go ISO ball final minute of the game, maybe f final 90 seconds, right? But before that, they more often than not are still trying to run plays to get good looks. Unfortunately, I think two things happen here. Number one, um I I do feel again it’s just the optics. Maybe maybe I’m wrong. I’m just rehashing 82 games plus playoffs. It felt like close games this season. ISO ball was really early like the last three minutes of a game sometimes like possession after possession after possession after possession it’s Paulo most of the time sometimes it’s frowns just iso iso iso iso so on the one hand you know if that is correct if if that is accurate my recollection I think that’s wrong but on the other hand when you look at this team offensively this season can you fully blame that’s where I was going Go Jamal Mosley for running ISOs for or can you blame Paulo and France for going ISO, not passing the ball? Exactly. That’s the other the other side of this coin, right? I think there were plenty of times this season where Paulo said, “Nah, screw that. I’m doing this myself, you know, for better or worse.” Um because he knew that sure he can drive and get a double team or a triple team and kick it out, but then what’s going to happen? Guy’s going to miss it. Um, and so I don’t fully blame him for that. But I think I think some of that criticism is fair though. I think it’s valid. Um, how much of that is on Jamal? How much of that is on the roster construction? You know, you can argue that, but I do think that’s warranted and I remember feeling that way many times throughout the season that there was just a lot of ISO ball down the stretch of close games. Yeah, I I think that’s a a fair criticism. Um, like we we’ve talked about the play calling, but I don’t think there was enough emphasis at times um like just around like getting guys looks like other teams run sets and it it just feels like not super frequently because the the Magic’s defense is so good, but like we’ll be watching games sometimes and and you saw this multiple times. Um, like I’m I’m thinking back to was it was it game four um that Porzingis really popped off or was it the first half of of game five? It was later in the series when he really started to pop off where they were just getting like open look after open look for him like alley oops um you know uh you know like back door you know cuts and stuff like that where it’s like the Magic have to work so hard every single possession to get a decent shot and when teams are just able to call like whatever their their set is that they call out and then all of a sudden wide open three or wide open lob or you know wide open drop off or back door cut, whatever the case may be. The Magic just don’t really get enough of those. And it did feel like at times there wasn’t enough of an emphasis of trying to get a guy like Contavius Cwell Pope or if it was Tristan Dilva in the lineup or Caleb Houston or whoever, there was just never enough emphasis on generating open looks for those guys. Now, you could argue a lot of that just has to do with spacing and some of the attention that some of the other guys get, but I do think that is also a fair criticism of Jamal Mosley as well. And again, these are although it was overall a good season like if again if you would have told us the circumstances of the health and everything like that and said yeah the Magic still end up 41 and 41 and it’s because of Jamal Mosley like you you can’t give him a neutral or or a negative grade like and I I would just kind of have the question for some people of like I understand the the negative things that you see But I don’t understand how you completely ignore all the positives as well. And to this point, once kind of the the roster and and some of the players have developed a little bit and things are from a a talent standpoint are getting to a better place. I don’t know how you come to the conclusion that the positives aren’t outweighing the negatives with Jamal Mosley. Yeah. I’ve got a couple more thoughts about coaching in general. First off, we said going into this past season that for a lot of players on the roster, it was a prove it year for a lot of reasons, you know, whether it was contract related or fit related or whether they Yeah. whether they fit with the core or whatever. And we a lot of players proved something this year. And so I I do wonder if this year, this this upcoming year, if the proper moves are made as far as the roster is concerned, does this turn into a proval Mosley? Again, not that I think he’s on the hot seat or anything. I don’t I I don’t I’m not even close to that. But with the core that we have, plus legitimate improvements, again, assuming they happen, this team should take a legitimate jump, especially from the 41 wins of this past season. I’m talking 50 plus, right? So, if those things happen and the team doesn’t make a jump, I think questions are valid. Um, the other thing I wanted to mention when it comes to coaching is, and I know this is something you’re passionate about, we’ve talked about it for almost a year now. Um, well, no, it would be, yeah, I guess it’s been over a year now, would be we still haven’t filled the vacant, and I’m I’m going beyond Jamal Mosley now. I’m going the whole coaching staff. To our knowledge, there’s still a a spot potentially open on this coaching staff that hasn’t been filled. I mean, when was that? When did he leave for Phoenix? Like Nate Tibbitz was before last season, right? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I’m almost positive. Yeah, it’s it’s been a Yeah, it was Yeah, it was before the anniversary season. Um, so yeah, I mean, we’re coming up on two years now since since that. And so I know there’s been a lot of talk, again, social media, but a lot of talk, get an offensive guru in Orlando. Keep Jamal Mosley as the head coach, as the the the head of culture and whatever you want to call it, but get somebody out there who’s got an offensive mind. I’m still 100% open to that. I don’t know about you. I we’ve not heard any rumors, any rumblings, nothing. Zero. But I think it’s worth exploring. And I’m definitely interested to see if Welman and Mosley work on something like that this summer. Yeah, I would I would very much be open to that. If nothing else, whoever had the bulk of that responsibility last year either needs to share that responsibility or those responsibilities need to be shifted. M I mean we know that there are a ton of really smart guys on this bench and including you know Jesse Mermis and Dale Osborne but Rep Brio Meyer, Jeremiah Boswell, Amir Bahur like there are a ton of smart you know capable coaches on this staff who I I’m sure you know I mean maybe I’m not sure but I would be hopeful that maybe with given some more opportunity potentially some of those guys would be able to have some ideas that may help. And that’s not that it’s not a like a collaborative coaching staff or something like that, but like different guys just have different responsibilities. And if that’s not your responsibility, your focus is is kind of elsewhere. Regardless of how it comes, internal growth, you bring somebody in externally, hire somebody else, it needs to be better. Like it it just flat out needs to be better. I think some of that is just going to get better with talent overall. And we’ll talk about that in just a minute here, I’m sure. Um, but it just it it just feels like the like the offense from a schematic standpoint has not really improved where the offense and the talent that we have offensively has improved a little bit. So, uh, yeah, definitely very much still open to that. This episode of the Sixman Show is brought to you by our friends over at Jamh Hot Chicken. Jam Hot Chicken. As always, they’re bringing Jam’s culture and hot chicken to the heart of Winter Park. We love Jam Hot Chicken because their food is amazing, but also because they are diehard Orlando Magic fans just like us. And so, yeah, check them out over at 400 West New England Avenue, Sweet 13 in Hannibal Square. Again, they’re in beautiful Winter Park. You can also follow them on social media, jamhotchick, or visit their website, jamhotchickenfl.com, where you can see the menu, order online, and check out all things jamhot. 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We have other tiers on our Patreon with other benefits like for as little as $5 a month, you can get access to our Discord community where we have like at this point like 80 Magic Maniacs and and fans who are talking about the Orlando Magic and right now talking NBA playoffs and uh like a new Pokemon set came out. So, there’s all different kind of conversations happening all the time in our Patreon. We have the best community in the world. we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without them. Um, it’s really what makes all of this worth it and makes it fun. So, appreciate them. And then we also shout out brand new patrons whenever we have them. So, a big special shout out this episode to Large Pizza and Brinar Halderson. I hope I’m saying that correctly. If not, feel free to reach out to us on social media or email or on the Patreon and uh correct our pronunciation. Again, I’ve been going to how to pronounce.com for some of these and to this point, it’s not really helped me out a ton. So, hopefully we are pronounc I’m pretty confident in the large pizza one. I think I’ve got that one down. Yeah. Uh but the other one we hope that we’re getting correct, but again, can’t do anything that we’re doing here without uh the love and support of our community every single week, every single month. Uh we’re just so thankful, so grateful to all of you. And if you would like to join the Patreon and um just kind of help continue to grow this Orlando Magic fan base and really that’s the whole point for everything that we do here. Again, you can head on over to patreon.com/the6manshow. But now let’s go ahead and get back to the episode. Okay. Uh let’s move on to the front office. So we’re talking about Jeff Welman, Anthony Parker, Pete Delisandre, like the entire front office team. Obviously Jeff Welman is, you know, the the head, you know, of that and is really the the face of the front office there. So, you know, we might refer to to Jeff, but we’re really speaking generally here as a team. Um, yeah, this front office. Do we want to I guess go back I I think you kind of have to go back to the off season. You can’t just do an inseason grade. So, when we’re talking about the off seasonason, right, like you know, resigning Mo Vagner, bringing back Goa Batad, what else was there? Obviously, there was the Wendell Carter Jr. extension, there was the Jonathan Isaac extension, the Jaylen Suggs extension, the Fron Vagner extension, and then there was the signing of Contavius Cwell Pope, there was the signing of Cory Joseph as well. Did you say drafting Tristan? drafting TR drafting Tristan D Silva. Yes. Um obviously exercising Caleb Houston’s I believe he had a team option this past year. What else? What else? Bringing Trev and Queen back. Yeah, bringing M. McClung kind of up from Oyola towards the end of the year. Adding Ethan Thompson as a two-way. And then as we all know during the season did nothing. So where do you want to start? Because I I I want to say we gave the offseason grade an A, right? Well, yeah. I I’m I think we start with the offseason. Do we want to defend or or deny that at this point? Well, no. Yeah. Let me just I’ll I’ll do both. I’ll I’ll talk about the offseason and and just kind of the the big picture again. A lot of people, hindsight’s 2020, you look at this past year, you say the sign of contavis Cowell Pope, what was he thinking? But rewind to last summer, it was a perfect fit. It was a perfect up, a literally perfect upgrade to Gary Harris. Remember, Gary Harris was for the most part the starting two guard the season before 2023 24. And you look at KCP and you go, he’s literally Gary upgrade. Like, you know, like the the the memes and the and the Twitter posts and everything where it’s got the one picture and the upgrade button and the next picture. It’s literally that, right? Like Gary a good defender, KCP’s better. Gary a good three-point shooter in some seasons. KCP better. Gary uh a proven veteran, right? Like KCP proven veteran with rings, right? Like across the board upgrade everywhere. And unless you went into this off seasonason thinking that Jeff should have should have upgraded a different position. If you said that this this past offseason, I’ll listen to your Fs, you know, your your Fs or your D minuses, whatever grade you’re going to give for the KCB signing. If you legitimately thought we should do something else, I’ll listen. But to everyone that said he needs to spend this money to upgrade the two guard position, he did it. Okay. Now, what happened in 2024 25 with KCP, I mean, it’s it’s it’s just unexplainable, right? Like, how do you explain the drop off? I don’t know. It’s it’s hard to believe, but I can’t blame Jeff Welman for that. I just can’t do it. For that thing and that thing alone, I cannot blame him for that. So, that that to me doesn’t knock knock his grade for the year for me. drafting Tristan. I think I think jury’s still out. I think Tristan was very solid this year. We talked about him on the forwards review uh the forwards grades. I was very happy happy with Tristan this year. He exceeded my expectations. I’m excited to see what he does this year with more playing time. I can’t knock him for that draft pick. Everything from the offseason I’m okay with. Everything. The I Yeah, I think so. The Wendell extension. Oh well the Wendell extension this is the only thing that it is tough but it it does give you just like a salary slot that is tradable for sure like that but on the other end of that and I actually I think that might have been last No it was okay threeyear 58.65 $65 million contract extension. Uh yeah, so starting next season he will be making $18.1. So this year it’s still 10.8 and then the following year it goes up to 18. So it’s actually we don’t really have that upgraded salary slot just yet, right? And you’re going to be trading him to a team and say, “Hey, like just by the way, his salary is going to almost double next year.” Yeah. So, so yeah, that’s that’s definitely an L. Yeah, probably. Yes, it does look it is definitely trending that way after one season for sure. Fast forwarding to the trade deadline. That for me is where I’ve got problems, right? Like I again I can’t sit here and pick apart the off seasonason. I think by and large he did exactly what a lot of Magic fans wanted. It just didn’t pan out and I don’t think that’s his fault. trade deadline is different. I think it is his fault and I think this team was streaming what? Their fault. Remember, we’re we’re great in the front office. Sure. Yes. Yes, it is their fault collectively, but at the end of the day, he is the he’s ahead um this team was screaming, was crying out for help. You just talked about January and February were miserable. It’s terrible, terrible time for a lot of reason. hear the the old Mario song. I can hear your heart crying out for me. That was us and the magic for a trade. Oh my gosh. Well, there’s there’s two sides of it. Yeah, there were fans that were crying out. I think the I think the players were too in a lot of ways, right? Like obviously not maybe not directly. It’s not like they were going to Welman’s office or you know, whatever, but just watching them like you said on Wouldn’t that be a development? January and February like and it’s a combination of things. Number one, the the team just wasn’t good, but number two, the guys that we were missing. It just all those things combined to a miserable January and February. You know what is in February, Jonathan? The trade deadline. So like all the signs were pointing in that direction. Every sign was like this is the time to make a move. You have to do it. Get a shot in the arm to this team. You know, at this point we knew we were going to be out be without Mo for the year. And it was a little bit after that that we found out Jaylen was officially done for the year. Jaylen was hurt at this time, right? But not officially out for the year. But this just give this team a shot in the arm, right? So to not do that to me, it it’s a that’s a maybe even a bigger I don’t want to say bigger. It’s a big L. It’s a big L. um and I thought really cost his team this season and has the potential to cost the team in the future. But the only thing I’ll add to this really fast when we heard his interview with Mike Bianke um talking about and the line that everyone quotes now getting squeezed right and how there were deals that were possible but it would have been rentals. I don’t want to say that I wish we had done that. I wish we had gambled on a rental, but if it if it wasn’t offering too much, I think I would have been okay with it. Like having just a guy to try and help you a little bit this season, I don’t think is the end of the world. Now, we’ll never know what those deals look like. And maybe Jeff Welman was exactly right and not giving up a lot for uh, you know, a rental, but if if they were small asking prices for rental, yeah, I wish we had done it. Um but yeah, for me the trade deadline it’s not not great and it potentially puts us in even tougher position as we enter trades trade conversations this summer. Yeah, I think the other kind of criticism that you can give Jamal Mosley, not Jamal Mosley, good grief, Jeff Welman in the front office for the off season was the JI extension and everybody points to, oh my gosh, this guy’s already made all this money. he hasn’t played, so on and so forth. Got the $25 million like pay increase basically for one year. But now moving forward, he’s making 15 million, 14.5, 14.5, and then 15 million, right? Like that’s at this point is like an average salary, like a a middle-of the road type of of salary. It’s not I don’t believe that’s exactly like the mid-level exception, but like it’s it’s at least in the name same neighborhood. Might not be on the same street. Might not be as nice of a house or whatever, but it’s it’s in the the the same neighborhood, same ballpark as that. Um and we’ll see, you know, if if that is a tradable asset, if the Magic are going to try and use that this uh you know, this off season. And looking at this, um there’s also like guarantees built into this, right? like 2026 2027 8 million is guaranteed and then it’s fully guaranteed if Isaac plays 52 games the year before um or one day after the 2026 moratorum. I don’t really Oh, it becomes fully guaranteed after the moratorum. Okay. So at that point basically you could wave JI before the moratorum and only $8 million would be guaranteed if you decided to do that and then 2027 2028 and then 2028 2029 it’s not guaranteed. Yep. So unless he plays 52 games unless he plays 50 or one day after the moratorium. So, the same thing like after 2026, 2027, you could completely wave him and get out of that contract. If you’re the Orlando Magic and look, the drop off from last year this year, if he continues on that kind of trajectory, then you probably do end up waving him at, you know, that point or perhaps the year after depending on how much he, you know, he kind of slides. I don’t personally think that will be the case, but you could pitch that to a team like, hey, like this is what we’re paying him. Hey, we’ll trade if it doesn’t work out, you have outs, right? Yeah. So, when you consider all of that, I don’t really think it’s a bad deal, you know, for for the Magic and I think it’s understandable kind of from from both ends there. So yeah, like when we come out of the off seasonason, everyone in their mother was talking about how the contavis Cwell Pope signing was exactly what the Magic needed, how it matched their identity and improved their shooting. It gives them veteran experience, championship pedigree, all of that kind of stuff. You listen to any podcast, you know, national or otherwise, talking about that signing and everybody said it was a great idea. It was a home run. Now, that being said, to this point, it is probably the worst signing that they’ve made other than Alfur Rukaminu since they’ve run this team, right? The Alfa Rukaminu from like day one, it was like, yeah, this doesn’t make any sense. It’s not really working and he was terrible the entire time he was here. And Davis Cowwell Pope, if he’s on this roster opening night and has a bounceback season where he shoots, you know, even like 37 38% from three next year and makes a massive difference, we’re all going to take a giant like exhale and say, “Oh, thank goodness that this is actually starting to work out, right?” And from the All-Star break on last year, it was more reflective of what we thought we were going to get. Now, the season was kind of already halfway in the toilet because of the injuries to Jaylen and Mo Vagner, but you would like to see him carry that over. So, going back to last offseason, I think at worst you can give it a B or I would argue a B+ at worst. I would still probably give it like an A minus, knocking, you know, the the Wendell um you know, extension. Now, during the season for me, it’s an F. like you needed to make a a deal at the trade deadline, it was evident to everybody, it was evident to the entire league, you didn’t, regardless of the reasoning, whether it was you didn’t want to get squeezed. If the reasoning and logic behind that is truly sound and is the truth, which you know, we’re we’re taking it at face value. We’re taking it at at what the front office is is telling the media. If it was rentals and assets you weren’t willing to give up because they didn’t make sense for effectively was an expiring contract, then fine, right? However, let’s say it was just truly like you just felt the asking price was too high for let’s say you weren’t getting squeezed for an expiring. Let’s say you legitimately could get a Kobe White or an Anthony Simons or or something like that or a DeAndre Hunter. Like if you could have made a move like that and you just decided like, “Oh no, we don’t want to attach this pick or we don’t want to attach Gary Harris or whoever, right?” And you were just kind of you just wanted to ride it out and see how things were going to go. Whatever the reasoning behind it was, it does not matter at this point. It makes this off season, in my opinion, so much more difficult and more important. And it just it it adds stress to it. Teams are going to have a bit more leverage, I think, than they would have towards the trade deadline. So, you you just I hate to say it, you needed to find a way to get it done, right? Like that’s if if we’re just grading the transactions and the the the logic does change my mind on that, right? Like if it if it really was these were this was the best we could do, it didn’t make sense. It’s like if we get a a document with a list of all the offers and we look at it and we say, you know what, these were garbage, then I give them a C. But if there was a deal to be made and they just decided to, hey, this is what we’re going to do, then it’s an F, right? So maybe like we’re I would settle on like a D, you know, for the the the offseason or not the offseason, like the regular season. I think I’m going to end up like a a D+ overall because the off season was fantastic at face value when we went through it. We all felt really good about it. Those moves didn’t pan out the way that we thought they would. And on top of that, you weren’t able to improve this team at the trade deadline when they so very desperately needed to do that. So again, this is based on what our expectations were going into the season where if you would have told us before the season like, hey, this is the situation. This is what happens. This is where the team is in January, February, this is how the Eastern Conference standings are breaking out. Do you think the team makes a deal? You and I would have said, “Yeah, I mean, you obviously have to.” And they didn’t. So, for me, I think I’m at like a D+, just below what, you know, we would have expected them to do. Um, and again, that is considering that we all thought it was a good offseason when it happened. Didn’t end up being that way 82 plus games later. Uh, but yeah, D+ for me. Yeah, I think if I combine both sides of the story, offseason and regular season, I’m probably in the same ballpark just for to not be the exact same as you like I was at for Mosley. I’m going to say C minus. Um I still give a lot I don’t hate that. I still give a lot of weight to the offseason. And going back to like the KCP signing, it’d be one thing if Welman took, you know, the the bulk of this money that we had last summer, if he took the bulk of that and threw it at a a unproven talent, you know, like rolling the dice like, “Oh, we think this guy could be whatever.” They like what the Wizards did with Jordan Pool. I think I think you could make Well, traded, but right, the grade a lot lower in a situation like that, right? like you you had talent evaluation, you decided to throw money and that was a fail. I just can’t put the same kind of framework around the KCP thing because he was so proven. He had done this multiple stops. Like the NBA knows what kind of player he is. And by the way, like we talked about with the guards episode, still a great defender, okay? By and large, still a great defender, especially when Jaylen was out there with him. That was a lot of fun. offensively is obviously the conversation, but he he’s proven it over a decade in the league. And so I can’t I just can’t knock Jeff Welman for that. I really can’t. And maybe that’s maybe that’s wrong of me, but So again, I’m with you. Offseason, great. But again, it’s it’s the deadline, not making the move that obviously brings the grade down a lot. But like you said, we just don’t we don’t know what deals were there, right? You know, who knows? Maybe they were all terrible. The other side of it is I’d like to think he was on the phone taking initiative calling teams and if that didn’t happen that could knock the grade even more. But I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and so I’m just going to go with a C minus for the whole season. But I let me add one more thing. I start I’m sorry. I promise. You’re good. This we’ve said this many times and this is the episode to to really really finalize it. We talked about a prove it year. This is a prove it off season for this front office. If they cannot put together a winning team around Powell and Fronzen company, it’s it’s done. It’s done skis. And that might be harsh for a front office that has done a good job of putting putting together this core, but this is this is your chance. This is your summer to figure it out. We ain’t come this far to come this far. Yeah. And we know Powell and Fron, they got we got futures to worry about with them. So, you can’t mess this up. You got to make moves. got to make this team better. You’ve He’s talked a lot already this summer about how things are changing, win now mode, all those things. He’s got to prove it. They’ve got to prove it. And so, yeah, it’s it’s a big offseason for them or otherwise. Next summer, I think could be a very different conversation. And we’re big fans on the show here of when you deserve criticism, we give you criticism. You deserve praise, we give you praise. like none of whether it’s a player, coach, personnel, front office, or otherwise, like we we we do our best to be fair to everybody. We really do. Like there’s nothing in any of these grades that are personal in any type of way. And like some people have argued that, oh, just because they fix a mess doesn’t mean they should get credit because they made the mess in the first place. I I disagree. Like what’s done is done. They find a way to get this team out of this. like kind of mess that we’re in. Like right now it’s like, you know, you spilled a little bit of juice on the counter, like we we’ve got time to to clean it up, but if spilling juice turns into lighting the house on fire, then we got problems, right? I’m then at that point, I I won’t give you credit for, you know, putting out the fire cuz the house is gone, right? But you’re able to, you know, clean up this juice and and you make me a delicious little fruit smoothie or whatever. I I will give you credit for that. Maybe that wasn’t the best analogy that I could have come up with, but we’re This isn’t a live show either. We could go back. We could edit that out, but we’re just going to leave it. No, we’re leaving it home. Yeah. But if they get it right and they hit a home run, I will give them praise for hitting a home run. Like that’s they will have deserved that because and look I’m just going to say they have made missteps along the way but like they have taken this team a long way. Yeah. And six years ago we all would have given body parts to have guys like Powell and Fron on this team. And you can maybe critique the way that they got there but they got there. Yeah. And now they have to get to the next level. Are you in the same place as me? Like if they don’t make the right moves this summer, they’re done. I think you have to be. Yeah. I I don’t think we’re we’re at the point where you you can’t play around with this. Like if if like the last two years has like, okay, hey, you you get credit for getting us here. Now the last two years is like, hey, like you got us here, but now it’s time to get to the next level. You can’t be at the same level for three years and be okay with that as a franchise. Yeah. like there will be I I’ll I’m not gonna guarantee obviously because we don’t have the authority to make decisions, but I would feel very confident and if if we’re in a similar situation next year where you have like I will say if you’re a first round exit next year, I would expect them to be gone. Yeah. Unless like I we don’t know. We don’t know yet going into to next season, but just like speaking generally, unless you just have the absolute worst luck in the world, if you’re a first round exit next year, you they’re most likely gone. Something would happen. Either it’s the front office or the coaching staff. But yeah, right. Something would have to change if that happens next year. Yeah. Aren’t these next few weeks going to be fun? We’ve we’ve already seen a handful of reports the last two weeks of just how crazy of like a transaction window this is going to be in terms of trades. Yeah. They’re saying like we had potentially the craziest trade deadline ever. We might be having the craziest off season ever in terms of trades. M I don’t know if anything is going to beat like the couple years of like free agency when it was like Carmelo Anthony, Amari Statamire, LeBron James, Chris Bosch, like all that kind of like stuff going on. But um yeah, like in terms of trades, this is I think this is going to be a all reporting and and and signs are pointing to this being a crazy trade season, right? Yeah. That’s It’s almost like, you know, when they try to predict hurricane season and every year it’s like this is going to be the most active ever and then it isn’t. It could be that. That’s jinx, bro. I’m just making the analogy. I’m not saying real real hurricanes. I’m saying that happens and then sometimes it’s duds. So, we’ll see if this is real or not. Yeah. All right. Um, that’s kind of the end of our grades. Like, what what is something else that we could grade? What about something like non basketball? Like what? I mean B like it is basketball I guess but like maybe not directly related to to the onc court product. Not the players, not the coaches, not the front office. Like what would you grade like our our jerseys right now? Like our jerseys and the like the current like Magic branding. What would you grade that? So, we’re talking about right now it’s the City jersey, like the Kingdom on the Rise, the statement jersey, and then it’s the icon and the association. Mhm. They’ve pretty much done away with like the blue and white pinstripes from like the Aaron Gordon VC, right, era, and then obviously the current like magic logo and word mark like what thinking about all that kind of stuff, what would you grade it? I’m gonna rapid fire grade each one individually and give you a whole grade. So, um the let’s start with the city jersey because it’s just for this past year. I liked it when it came out and I still like it. I just feel like we have too many city nights, right? It just kind of gets old. It loses its its mystery factor, its its, you know, awe factor, it wow factor. you you only have 41 home games, so when you use half of them on city nights, I don’t know, it just loses its special meaning to me. So, I still like it, but wish it was a little less frequent. Um, I’ll give it a C++. I think it’s all right. Um, the then I’ll go in order my least favorite to my favorite, the white um association jerseys. My least favorite of of the three regular jerseys. I’m going to give it like a D maybe. Yeah, I’ll give it a D. Just don’t. I just It’s all right. It’s not my favorite. The black just a little bit better. I’ll give it just a C. But I gotta say something, Jonathan. The statements. Those are one of my favorite jerseys in Magic history, period. Like top five. It’s got everything you could ever ask for except maybe the font. I don’t know about that. Maybe the font. You got You got pinstripes. You got the stars down the side. I I love those jerseys. And I’m Yeah, I love those jerseys a lot. uh their top five for me. Again, you change the font, it’s a 10 out of 10, 100% grade. Um and then the logo, I mean, we all kind of know what we feel about the logo. It’s It wasn’t our favorite when it came out, and that was uh 16 years ago now, 15 years, whatever it was. 20 I guess it was 2010. Yeah. So, you know, now I don’t love it. It’s just very corporate, very blleh. Um, all in all, I’m gonna give our branding, our current branding and logo and jerseys and all that kind of stuff just a C. It’s just all right. It’s fine. It’s not terrible. Yeah, it’s mid. And but I will say maybe maybe I’ll give it a C plus cuz that that statement jersey just holds a lot of weight for me. I love that jersey. I’m going to go C++. that statement jerseys making up for the last 16 years for you. I mean, look, if you’re going 16 years, I was just talking about this year. I mean, I don’t know. Yeah, I’m I’m just sticking with it. Cus, it’s fine. There’s way worse out there. Okay. I want to I want to do something really quickly. You said top five. Yep. So, what what else is in the top five for you? And are we doing like different iterations? like there’s now been two Stars jerseys because there’s the old was it was it Adidas or was it Reebok the first iteration of the Stars jerseys and then there were the Nike Stars jerseys like the classics that came out last year. Are we doing so just you’re just putting those blue stars that’s as one? Yeah to me. So for me, like in no particular order, it’s the three pinstripes, old school pinstripes, it’s the blue stars, and it’s this one. To me, this statement jersey, it’s Yeah, it’s probably it’s very close with the white stars. Like you you could argue either. I think at worst it’s probably sixth. At worst, I would probably agree. Top five, I would put it at five, but at worst it’s probably six. I’m trying to think like nothing from like the Grant Hill, Dwight Howard era, like the box, you know, just those those are the worst of the worst. The only thing that is worse was like the anthraite gray and orange stuff to me that is just so bad. Bad. And then trying to think like you go from the best of the best, the pinstripes into the stars and then you go into the box stuff and then you go into all the Adidas with the fanned pinstripes. Yeah. All of that is pretty low. The city jerseys with like the galaxy kind of stuff. Those are okay. Yeah. And then you go into the city stuff with the like the orange like the white and orange are okay. Probably still towards the bottom. probably like bottom third towards like the middle. And then yeah, I mean the earned jersey from a couple years ago was really sick. That’s probably somewhere in the top 10. And then um all right, so I’ll I’ll give my grades here. So yes, the statement jersey definitely an A. The Kingdom on the Rise, the City stuff, I do agree probably lean into that a bit too much. Uh but I still really like them. I think this year’s was my favorite version of those. So, I’ll give those a B. And then the icon, the black, and the association. I This is going to be a hot take. I know everybody hates the white. I like the white better than the black jerseys. Um the white is just like it it’s very clean. Like it it it looks good if you just want to like wear it casually. the black one for me it was always hard and black is like my color of choice to to wear like you know it’s my wife’s favorite color on me for anybody out there wondering um right up there with like a nice like forest green she loves the way I look in forest green might have to go throw that master’s polo on that she likes when I wear might have to go throw that on after we’re done recording here okay um this is the six-man show after dark at this point um totally kidding maybe um so yeah I would probably give the association like a C and then give the the black like a D+ and then the logo to me is a is a D. And I I’m right there with you. I think overall right now we’re at we’re at a C just, you know, overall with the with the branding and yeah, people have been, you know, clamoring for a refresh for a long time and hopefully we’ll get that at some point. Maybe hopefully really soon. That’s going to do it for this one for Kevin Tucker. It’s been Jonathan Osborne. You all have been listening to the Sixman Show and we will catch you guys next time. See you. Thanks for listening to The Sixth Man Show. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes and Spotify to get new episodes downloaded directly to your phone. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to give us a five-star rating and a review. It helps out the show a lot. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @6manshow. We’ll catch you guys next time. Go Magic. [Applause] Let’s go.

We’re wrapping up our “grades” series with Jamahl Mosley & the front office!

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0:00 – Intro
5:26 – Grading Jamahl Mosley
31:03 – Grading Weltman & Front Office
54:12 – Bonus Grades!

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