What Went Wrong: Jacque Vaughn
The Orlando Magic’s season started with modest goals and bright expectations. It came crashing down and the struggles laid at coach Jacque Vaughn‘s feet.
The Orlando Magic had a lot of goals in front of them this season.
They wanted to turn the corner and become a Playoff contender. They wanted to establish an identity. They wanted to prove their place in the league as a young roster. They wanted to inspire confidence that the end to the rebuild was over and that winning was a priority.
At times, it looked like they were accomplishing these goals. Overall though, there is no other way to describe the 2015 season as anything but a failure.
Who does that blame rest on?
Yes, the players’ failure to execute plays a big role. Ultimately they play the game and everyone else is just a scapegoat. Expectations are realistic and this team did not achieve them.
But, at the same time, the Magic also failed to accomplish all the goals set out on that list. And many of those goals were philosophical and schematic.
Sitting at 15-37 in early February and seeing the chance at meaningful games completely disappearing, the Magic let go their coach of two-plus seasons. It was an admission of the failure that was his coaching tenure.
Failure might be strong. For two years, he did what he was supposed to do. He nurtured young talent, saw them grow and put in work in a professional manner. He was willing to and did absorb the losses. A 58-158 record is the worst in Magic history (in fairness, James Borrego only tops Vaughn and interim coach Chris Jent with his .333 win percentage).
This year asked for something different though. Results did matter.
And there was no doubt there Vaughn failed.
The team, by the time his coaching tenure neared its end looked lifeless. His final two home games were a 115-100 laugher against Milwaukee that saw the rumors about his demise kick off, followed by an even more lifeless 108-93 loss to Dallas.
After those two home losses were completed, it felt like a matter of when and not if. The Magic were just looking for the right time to let him go.
And the change in coach was indicative of the failures from the season to that point.
The Magic had no identity. In fact, they changed it at least twice during the course of the season.
This was a team with young players who struggled in the half court unable to get fast break opportunities. They were shackled by an overly simplistic offense that putt hem in positions that did not suit their strengths. Victor Oladipo was running pick and rolls and finding the paint completely full with no one to dish it out to.
About the only play that did work was setting up a post up for Nikola Vucevic or an isolation for Tobias Harris. Neither of those make an offense as the game bogged down and ball movement was scarce.
Then there was the three-game spurt in January when the Magic tried to run at a break neck pace. It was exciting and it produced some wins. But it killed an already struggling defense.
And the defense? Where to start with a defense that gave up 105.9 points per 100 possessions and ranked 25th in the league? This was not a team that had a defensive identity like the team aspired at the beginning of the season. It was clear very early on that Nikola Vucevic and Channing Frye were not a good front court pairing.
And yet they kept heading out there, with Vucevic trying feebly to hedge pick and rolls to give Frye more time to rotate and struggling to catch the roll man and the ball handler as they came across by hanging back.
Nothing Vaughn tried worked. And as he tried to throw the kitchen sink to make something work, he had lost his team.
And with that most of the season was lost, stunting the growth for this team and leaving its goals decidedly unachieved.
The failure of 2015 likely set the Magic back a year in their rebuild plan. It likely means we are talking about trying to achieve the same goals next season.
Yes, Victor Oladipo got better. Elfrid Payton emerged. Nikola Vucevic improved his consistency. Tobias Harris too. Individuals got better. The team never came together and that lies solely with the coach.
It would have been OK if Vaughn maybe half achieved his goals. Nothing is perfect and it would have shown team progress. It would have been a clue as to whether Vaughn can have this team take the next step.
What really went wrong with Vaughn was that he did not come close to accomplishing any of the goals the team set out at the beginning of the year. The team may know which players are not going to be part of the future, but it is no closer to figuring out what kind of team it is going to be and what the future holds for this group.
Anything other than the nebulous “bright future.”
The failure to establish an identity, falls squarely on the coaching staff and the lead man for failing to put in a consistent message and a consistent playing style on his charges. Instead, it was… no one is really quite sure what it was.
And that was exactly the problem.