Steve Francis

He's not having a "terrible" season. He's shooting 45% from the field, and his turnovers are down. He's also deferring to Dwight Howard more, which shows some leadership capabilities. I think he'll get traded before the deadline.

 

That's always been Steve's problem, whenever he plays to these strengths he turns the ball over WAY too much and when the team starts to struggle he starts to force things by overdribbling. Steve is a great player that needs to dominate the ball to play well, but is terribly inconsistent when he does. It's like you're damn if you do and damned if you don't. This year he's had some problems, the car accident and I believe he recently had that ear disorder come back a bit. Earlier a lot of people were praising steve about lowering his TOs to an all time low, but his overall production was at or close to career lows as well. It's such a disappointment considering how he came into the league.

 

He's the same ole player, very inconsistent. He had a nice stretch of games earlier. But that team has to address some other situations. Grant Hill is gonna have to make a decision, when he came back, it took them a while to get used to him, then they started playing well, then he got hurt. He's not helping that team because he has to be implemented into the O everytime he comes back.

last night they started Nelson, Francis, Stevenson, Howard, and Battie.

 

He's been sucking hard lately, it's like he's trying to lower his trade value, but apparently he has an inner ear problem that might be effecting him somehow, bad balance or something. As far as their team, the Magic have decided to force feed Dwight Howard and he's not even close to ready, not even close to what Yao was in his second season IMO, and Nelson is a bigger part of the offense too, he's been handling the extra responsibility fine though. Oh well, I said before the season started that he was in danger of falling below all the young guys, and that he would have to step it up to keep up with them, he hasn't. Too bad, hope he gets traded to a team with an already established star, right now he's the Magic's best and most important player, and he's not good enough anymore to lead a winning team in that role.

 

I think Steve stopped caring last season, I relaly think the Mobley trade hit him hard, real hard, and he hasn't gotten over it 'til now.

When your heart isn't in it, sometimes it is hard to pretend for too long that you care. Add that to the losing aspect of it, and Stevie having to defer to their up-and-coming franchise player, and I just think that Stevie lost interest in playing there, plain and simple.

I have said this in the past and I will continue to stand by it: Steve Francis is the type of player that you can't team up with someone else who isn't willing to take a back seat to him; he excels in playing by himself, or otherwise he struggles.

He's the Marbury clone and has been from day one: terrific players that can't conform to a team game, and if they do so they will struggle and it will diminish their games.

That being said though, I still love Stevie, looking forward to cheering him on in the upcoming annual charity game that he holds in Houston every year.

 

I disagree that Francis isn't capable of being an effective team player.....

Regardless of his shortcomings, once Yao came on board we won 43 games his rookie year and 45 the second. During this time he sacrificed his scoring numbers in an effort to run an effective inside-outside game with Mobley being a solid 3rd option. That's an average 44 wins a season in the brutal Western Conference with an up-and-coming player in Yao he was deferring to at times.

Last season in Orlando the team was 18-14 before that bonehead Weisbrod made the season-killing and pointless Mobley/Christie deal that completely disrupted team chemistry and sent Francis into his "little girl" mindset. From that point on the entire attitude and level of intensity for that team changed. Had that trade not have went down I think it's safe to assume the Magic would have finished a lot better and made the playoffs rather than ending at 36-46.

 

Steve isn't good enough to be the best player on a contender and isn't deferential enough to play second fiddle to someone else. None of this should be a surprise to anone though, as he has not really changed since his rookie season.

 

I think the only way Steve can thrive is if he played with another franchise player who is a pass-first kind of guy, like Nash or Kidd.

That way, Steve can just catch and dunk, catch and drive, or catch and shoot. Less turnovers, higher scoring.

 

I see him getting traded as well.

 

steve francis can only thrive in an iso game where he gets the ball and the whole 24 sec shot clock all to himself.
the only thing he can do better than most point guards is rebound the ball. he is fearless.

i wish him all the best, i'm a huge supporter of any former rockets who loved our team, but i'm so glad for the trade.

 

I only hope that if he is traded, it's to a winning team or at least a team with a good, positive orginization. Stevie's problem is and always has been that he's not a leader. He needs good positive peer reinforcement to play his best, as evidenced here in Houston.

 

so did anyone watch last night and see Dooling and Ray allen get into it. that's the second year in a row a magic pg had an incident in the emerald city. steve sucked again last night, and I know guys will blame him for the magic's woes and that's fine, but I'm telling that team has to make decision on Hill.


last night they started Turkoglu, he let Lewis light them up for 43 on 18 shots. it was one of the best offensive performances I've seen this year. Hedo had a nice game but they had to run Stacey Augmon out there he was getting lit up so much.

 

Dooling went way overboard there. Allen can't really fight anyways, so it's good that he was seperated from Dooling rather quickly.

On a sidenote, we can use Dooling's speed in our backcourt, I thought he had some untapped talent watching him play with Miami this past season.

 

Steve's been suspended, and he didn't even have to go to the Super Bowl or kick a camera man, WTF?! He's completely lost it, I think we saw BY FAR the best of him here in Houston, whether you think it wasn't all that or you thought he did fine like me, the good Steve is now gone.

http://www.nba.com/magic/news/Steve_Francis_Suspended-164059-800.html

 

He was pretty upset last night when he got benched, he got a tech, but he played pretty well in the second half so I thought he was over it. it was funny the announcers were talking about how distant he was in the game and he has seemed that way for a couple of weeks now. I don't know what he did.

 

He's been playing badly, I've seen a couple of Magic games and have been left questioning his effort, including last night, made worse by the fact that Jameer Nelson is finding his niche and playing great.



I know most think braintypes are BS, but Steve is the same BT as such characters as Artest, Spreewell, Chad Johnson, Randy Moss, Manny Ramirez, Dennis Rodman, Danny Forston, Stephen Jackson, Barkley, and Paris Hilton. They're vulnerable to being overcome with emotions, and doing things without really considering the consequences, I'm not saying it's typical to all of them, but usually when you see a flamboyent athlete or entertainer they're probably ESFPs like Steve, and every once in a while they do stir things up. They're mostly fun loving people though, never really mean to cause conflict or harm to anyone, Elton Brand, Ray Allan, Jermaine O'neal, John Madden, Lebron James, Britney Spears, Emmit Smith, Brian Urlacher, Magic Johnson, Donovan McNabb, Lance Berkman, Albert Pujols, Shawn Marion, Rashard Lewis, Teddy Bruschi, are all fine people and ESFPs too. When you hear fans or people close to them talk about them you get the feeling that they're great people, great teammates, and some are just misunderstood, that's actually what Dwight Howard said about Steve recently. Might be just another coincidence found in braintypes though, who knows...

Just to add a little bit to this, Steve's braintype usually has conflicts with the braintype of JVG and Brian Hill, ENTJs like them just don't understand why an ESFP like Francis doesn't take things as seriously as they do. They love to compete and win, but they love to have fun too, fun does not equal too much thinking, which is what those types of coaches demand from their players. That's why Tracy McGrady is such a dream for JVG, he's an ISTP, big thinkers, and he's extremely talented, JVG probably can't believe how easy it is to get what he wants from him, but he probably has trouble with Yao. Rudy T is an ESTJ, they can relate a lot better to Francis' braintype, especially when their players coach types like Rudy is, they can accept mistakes as long as the player is playing hard.

 

I've watched each of the last 5 games. Steve has been the third option. Turkoglu and Howard are playing very well. Steve doesn't play anything resembling defense. 7 of his assits last night were to Pat Garrity who shot 9-11.