Jeff Weltman Is Under FIRE by Magic Fans...

Jeff Weltman is under fire, and Magic fans are running out of patience. Orlando just got embarrassed by Toronto, dropping to 1-3, and the concerns fans have had about this roster and the front office are getting louder and harder to ignore. With the offensive struggling, injuries piling up, and players getting off to rough starts, who's really responsible? And with the NBA Cup tipping off tonight, The Magic have immediate chance to respond. We're going to break all this down and more on this episode of Magic Digest what's good with it. It's your big uncle Eric in the building. How are you living, man? We are back again tonight. The NBA Cup jumps off. Another game against the Toronto Raptors in Toronto. After the last game, I was going to do a recap, but I think sometimes when you have a loss, certain losses, you just got to throw those out. Not that you can't learn from them. All of them Some of them can be learning experiences, but sometimes you just toss that one out. All right. That's going to be the one that we toss out. We'll talk about it a little bit here today, but more than likely, I really want to talk about Jeffrey Weltman. I don't even know if his first name is Jeffrey. I'm going to just say Jeff Weltman and his front office, Anthony Parker, and everybody attached to it. What? It's going on like and I'm let me jump off to you guys before we even get super deep into this. I just want to let you know that I understand I see what you guys are saying in this roster. Jeff Weltman. Everything is under real scrutiny. I've been looking around looking at the different outlets and just seeing. Hey, you can't really put too much blame on your first year coach four games into the season. You can't really do anything about injuries as much as we hate them. And it seems like the Magic are cursed with being injured. You can't really do anything about that. But what you can do as a front office is work on your roster, you know, control the narrative Um, about. Who you have and. What type of team are you putting out there? So we'll get into all of that, man. I just want to take a look at the offseason moves and kind of just sum up what this front office has done just in this offseason. I'm not even talking about the history since Jeff Weltman has been with this team. I'm just talking about this offseason. We can start on June 1st. With the official hiring of Sean Sweeney, it took a while. We didn't know which way this team was going. There were people calling for, you know, retreads like Tom Thibodeau and some of the other guys. Yes. But they make the choice and give Sean Sweeney his first head coaching job. It definitely felt like they had. They had been looking at him and were waiting for the playoffs to be over since he was in the finals with San Antonio. On draft night, they don't have a first round pick due to the Desmond Bain trade where you trade a lot of resources and you use your second round pick in a couple of trades to move back and acquire Isaiah Nelson on draft night. He gets injured in the... Um, what is it? He gets injured in the summer league. Hasn't played a minute of NBA basketball. There was questions on if he ever would even make it to the team. You know, probably he might've spent most of his time down in Osceola. Who knows? Then we finally get some movement in free agency when they go ahead and let go Jonathan Isaac. It was like, Oh, okay. I'll be honest. You just Just talk to my brother. We've had varying. ideas of who Jonathan Isaac is. I like the thought process of Jonathan Isaac. It's kind of like if you bring back Jonathan Isaac from the bubble, that dude, even though he was on some bull, well, my personal opinions aside, I'll leave that out. But Jonathan Isaac, the player that was in the bubble around that time, I understood. But what has he been for this team since? I don't I don't know, we'll address that later. And you're like, okay, they're waiving him. Let's see what happens. And they waive him to only a few days later, not only bring him back, I mean, at a better contract for the team, but, and they use that money to re-sign Javon Carter and bring in Nikola Vucevic. I said my piece then, again, I'm not going to harp on that. I still think, I am hopeful that Vuce ends up being what Magic fans want him to be for this team this year. That's all I'll say. I still have my doubts on what his real production will be towards winning basketball, but we'll see. And then, of course, we see that the Anthony Black extension deadline came and went without a deal. That means that Anthony Black can go to restricted free agency next season. I pose this question to you because I want to know what you guys think. Are you happy with this front office? I am not one of the people who thinks that you have to break up your main guys at this moment. I still think they're still young enough and still talented enough to figure out how to play together in a winning way. But that doesn't mean that every move that you did do or didn't do was great. I thought last year when you brought in Javon Carter, he was a good shot in the arm for a team that was really young. You know, what he did on the, you know, he had some interesting moments when he played, but he came in as a solid vet who could just provide a little bit of levity and what they call the being the adult in the room. I thought he did that role well. I don't know what role he's playing this year seems to be more of that, but on the court, he just hasn't been very productive. I love that Sean Sweeney is. Giving Jace opportunity to really, you know, win, fail, or succeed. He's giving him that opportunity. I just don't know if I believe that an impactful NBA player is there. Not to say it can't develop. Not to say he may not become the greatest player, whoever. But right now, I'm just not seeing it. I'm seeing a very small guard who doesn't really have the confidence. to attack in a way his handles can improve. He does. I like that he'll take a shot. He will take the shot, but he needs to be better. If you're going to be in there and just providing, you know, you got to hit the, you got to hit those shots. Those are a lot of the shots I've seen Jace take. He's got to hit those. If he's not hitting those, he's not really playmaking. He's not really even being a valuable outlet when a team faces pressure. And then on defense, other than, you know, maybe, you know, doing some fake 94 foot pressure. I haven't really seen it from Jace. You know, it's interesting. I found a comment. I love it. I told you guys, I love bringing you guys in. And... Talking about what you got. I found this comment and I had to block some things out if you're looking on YouTube. Shout out to this user. He literally said, but this is what he said. I literally think Jonathan Isaac is blank with Jeff Weltman because ain't no way in the world he could get cut, get hurt, and get re-signed. They are blank for real, for real. Ain't no other way. How long has this guy been sitting on the bench collecting money and no one says anything again? I'm not going to get into all that, but when we look at this salary cap situation, you're looking at a team that is $52.9 million over the salary cap. We're looking at a team that's $17.4 million paid in luxury taxes. They're $8.9 million over the first apron. And they're only a little bit under $4 million under the second apron. Now, I know a lot of times guys will talk about the second apron and what it is. For the most part, just look at it like this. You get a lot of really serious penalties when you start to get too deep into that, when you cross into that second apron. We're talking about. Things that you can use to build your roster. So no longer are you able to aggregate salaries when you make a trade. That means if you trade a guy for $20 million, you bring in a guy for $20 million, you have to trade a guy who costs $20 million. You're not able to use your exceptions, mid-level exceptions, taxpayer exceptions, which are helpful tools to bring in quality roster guys, you know, to fill out your roster. You start to lose draft picks, potential, there's just more damaging penalties that just makes it really hard for you to build your team when you're in that second apron. Now, if the Magic were a winning team, if they come out here and go, you know, win 65 games and are, you know, first in the conference. make it to a finals maybe go game five game six in the finals before they lose then you say hey we got the team this is the team that we got we gotta pay for it whatever we need to do we're just kind of adding around the perimeters but for a team like the magic that has constantly you know been fighting to get in the playoffs and I know we're dealing with injuries I know we're dealing with a bunch of different things it just makes it really hard for teams and front offices and ownerships to justify spending all that extra money when you are not getting the right results. Even Jeff Weltman, when we asked in the media day, when asked about the moves that they were going to make, he understood that this Magic team is very expensive and there's going to be a lot of change if they don't get it right. He says, During media day, demonstrating how narrow the margins are to get in the playoffs. Obviously, you are well aware we are going to have to make some changes. This team will not be able to maintain this level of continuity next season. How that looks, I don't know. We're all going to find out together. That means the way this team that we see currently constructed won't be like this next season. It's just physically, it's just impossible. You're talking about the fact that the money is tied up into basically four guys. Just this year alone, you have Franz, $41.8 million, Paolo, $41.2 million, Desmond Bane, $39.4 million, Jalen Suggs, $32.4 million. You got 20 or 18 going to Wendell Carter and Anthony Blacks before he gets his contract is sitting at 10. Like, where are you supposed to put together your roster? Your top five players are making 172 million of a total salary cap that should be your combined salary is 190 million and 172 of that is going to five players. I mean, your total salary right now is $218 million and 80% of that is going to five players. It just makes it hard for your team to make moves. After the Toronto game, Tristan Silva, who, man, shout out to him as he has continued to shoot the ball. What we want from him, he's continued to do. He had this to say about Toronto. That's what they do. They try and play that scrappy game. I think we just kind of got ourselves into trouble a little bit, driving in the crowds and playing off of one foot. That's something we got to clean up before Friday. And that's because Orlando opens up the NBA Cup with Toronto tonight. If we look at the roster here, let's take a look at this roster. I mean, we can see again tonight we got this game against Toronto. Then we follow it up with a game against the Celtics, the Wizards. I tell you, it's until we get to the Suns and the Warriors and the Kings and the Jazz where we might get some easy wins. This team has to be able to put it together, just plain and simple. There are going to be very few easy nights in this Eastern Conference. I look at this roster and I see three major places where Jeff Weltman and his front office could have addressed during the offseason. One is backup guard, just another guard who you trust a little bit more than Jace and Javon Carter right now. You see with Jalen Suggs being injured, even if we're giving the ball to Franz, you know, we're playing a lot through Anthony Black, a team like Toronto who plays with that high pressure. They're very long. We're able to just carve up the Magic's offense. Shooting, thank God for Tristan Da Silva. You know? You know, I'm sure Anthony Black, Desmond Bain at some point will get back on track. A, B, other guys, but we just need more shooting. And I still think a better big, a better true big would just have been something I would have loved the Magic to try to adjust in the off season. Another question, because I've seen this go out. I saw this online. This was on Facebook. It said, Should Orlando sign Kevin Porter Jr.? There was even a comment left on a video. It's time to use that extra roster space, Kevin Porter Jr. If you go look at the comments, if you go look at the responses, there's not a lot of faith in this front office. So I'm going to get up out of here, but I ask you guys, who deserves the most blame for Orlando's start? Is it A, the overall roster construction? Is it B, the players and the execution? I'm not just being on point. Or is it C, are we just falling back on injuries? Is it just injuries? And if the injuries weren't there, things would be different. Tell me how you feel. Just let me know. Sound off down below in the comments. It's your big uncle, Eric. I'm going to get up out of here. Until next time, it's Magic Digest, man. I hope y'all doing good, man.