Rob Hennigan, Scott Skiles and the tension of culture

The Orlando Magic’s rebuild with Rob Hennigan fell flat. It reached its greatest tension with issues of culture and strife surrounding Scott Skiles.

It was clear when the Orlando Magic hired Scott Skiles in 2015, they were trying to strike a new path.

The team had gone through three years with an inexperienced coach in Jacque Vaughn, hoping to nurture the young roster. But the team found itself spinning its wheels. The Magic had not eclipsed 30 wins and made only small progress — going from 20 to 23 to 25 wins.

The team hoped that by Year Three of the rebuild, it would be ready to play more meaningful games. Even by modest timelines, the Magic thought they had enough to begin showing more tangible progress. That failure led to Jacque Vaughn’s dismissal.

In stepped the most divisive and controversial element of the Magic’s rebuild. They opted to hire Scott Skiles, the hard-charging, demanding coach who they believe would help bring the team up to another level.

The Skiles’ hire, while delivering the Magic’s best season in the last five years at 35 wins, proved to be tumultuous.

Rumors of discord between Skiles and general manager Rob Hennigan were rampant. Really it started from the beginning with the rumors team CEO Alex Martins bypassed Hennigan to hire him or put Skiles’ name on the list.

The discord led to the Magic beginning to transform their roster. The Tobias Harris trade was made reportedly to appease Skiles and bring in more veterans to lead the team. It had the secondary benefit of clearing cap room.

When Skiles suddenly resigned, the franchise became chaotic. They recovered to hire Frank Vogel, but the attitude had clearly changed. Skiles’ hiring signaled the Magic’s desire to win now and a new urgency to the team.

The 2015 season proved to be a critical turning point for Rob Hennigan. It was where the Magic hit an odd low in a difficult rebuild. And ultimately led them to Thursday’s decision.

"“There is a number of different things that happened over the course of the past five years that led us to this date,” Martins said in a press conference Thursday. “There is not one individual or one individual move or non-move that led us to this point. It was a compilation of five years that did not live up to expectations. We certainly believe we should ahve been in a better point five years later. There are other organizations who have started this process at the same time or after we did and they will be playin gin the Playoffs. I have reflected a lot over lots of things that have happend over the last five years.”"

It was clear the direction the Magic were heading and the decisions they had made in the past five years led them to this point.

The common refrain throughout the rebuild was about building culture. That was Vogel’s favorite calling card for the final weeks of the season. The Magic needed to do everything they could to begin building habits that would help them in the future.

Indeed, the Magic’s inability to respond to big punches and take blowout losses was a constant theme throughout this season. It suggested a broken culture where losing had become inevitable.

Nothing the Magic did seemed able to break it. Adding veterans did not work. Changing coaches did not work.

The first serious questions to how the Magic were building through all this losing came from Skiles.

The disagreements between Hennigan and Skiles were not unknown. There did not seem to be great synergy between the two men in the Magic’s front office and the direction they wanted to go.

Martins admitted during his season-ending press conference Skiles had his concerns. It was no secret and the two had conversations about it. He would not elaborate any further.

The problem, it seemed came down to culture. That was the point Martins made when he discussed the decision with Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel on Open Mike:

"“The culture is the atmosphere and the expectations you set up around your basketball team,” Martins explained on our Open Mike radio show Friday. “How are those expectations communicated? How are you holding everybody accountable? What is the true message about the level of commitment we expect? … What do we expect from them [players] day in and day out?“The teams that have won — whether it’s Cleveland or Golden State — have successful cultures. It’s palpable. You can feel it. When you walk into their organization everyday [in Cleveland or Golden State] you have Cavalier pride, you have Warrior pride. There was not that level of Magic pride in our basketball operation. Our culture was lacking. There wasn’t a structure to our culture and our basketball administration is responsible for that."

Bianchi went on to report from sources close to the situation Skiles felt Hennigan cultivated a lax culture. He said Martins acknowledged this lax, development culture was one of the things Skiles warned about and sought to fix.

At the end of the day, the Magic tried to sell Skiles on being patient and waiting for the young group to continue growing. And Skiles was not willing to do so.

Skiles did some to change the culture. The team went 19-13 and experienced its first taste of success with him as head coach. But then they faltered. The infamous 2-12 January spelled the beginning of the end for the Magic’s nascent Playoff hopes. Perhaps, ironically, the Magic did not follow their own advice and pushed their chips to the center of the table rather than trusting their new coach to continue the growth they showed

But then they faltered. The infamous 2-12 January spelled the beginning of the end for the Magic’s nascent Playoff hopes.

Perhaps, ironically, the Magic did not follow their own advice and pushed their chips to the center of the table rather than trusting their new coach to continue the growth they showed.

Then again, perhaps the Magic were never going to turn that corner. In some ways, the rot was too deep. The culture established at the beginning of the rebuild had taken root.

Orlando gambled a bit in trying to build through the Draft for multiple years. The losing in the first few years of the rebuild became embedded in the team’s psyche almost. No matter how hard they tried to dig out of it, it remained subconsciously. Players said all the right things, but there was a lack of knowledge or a lack of nurturing that prevented them from taking hte next step.

The rot from losing so much might truly be too deep to weed out through signing key veterans or adding a new coach. It may have come from the very beginning with Jacque Vaughn, who became more of a positive babysitter rather than a coach beginning to build the roots of a winning culture.

It may not have been something Scott Skiles could solve. And, of course, it is tough for someone so close to the situation in Rob Hennigan to be overly critical of what he believed he was building. Perhaps Skiles could have communicated his concerns clearer.

One thing is certain, the Magic are not going anywhere until they change this intangible of their team. It may take making some hard decisions and shipping out long-term players. It may take simply having a new set of eyes on the problem and new leadership as a general manager, with a new approach and opinions on the team.

Next: For players, losing Rob Hennigan a disappointment

To be sure, this is the biggest push and pull the Magic have to wrestle with and resolve during this critical summer.