The Magic front office believes despite the failings of Jacque Vaughn, the future in Orlando looks bright.
Thursday afternoon, the Orlando Magic brass led by general manager Rob Hennigan and CEO Alex Martins gathered with the media to answer questions about the future of the Magic organization in the wake of the firing of head coach Jacque Vaughn.
Vaughn compiled just a 58-158 record in Orlando and the team currently sits at 15-37 on the season, the same record they had through 52 games last season. Despite the lack of success, it was apparent the decision to part ways with head coach Jacque Vaughn was not an easy one for Hennigan, Martins or anyone else in the Magic organization.
“This is a extremely difficult day for us for obvious reasons,” said an emotional Hennigan. “I’ll say that Jacque Vaughn is an incredible person. He’s a class act. He’s an A-plus human being. He was a joy and a pleasure to work with and we’ll miss him greatly.”
Despite the platitudes, both men said they realized an organizational move was inevitable. As recent reports have suggested, no one was pleased at a team that looked like it had plateaued in just the third season of a rebuild.
Many around the league this season have come into Amway Center and left impressed with the Magic’s assets. Watching a team that has lost 16 of 18 games and given up at least 100 points in their last 14 games just became too much for Martins.
Through the Phog
“Today’s decision is about the fact that we’re just not where we feel we should be today, ” said Martins. “We told you at the beginning of the season we felt like this was the season we needed to turn the corner and we haven’t. We feel like we’re still going to turn the corner. We may have to take a little bit of a u-turn here in the short-term, but we’re just not where we expected or where we feel we should be.”
Trying to start that upward trend for the Magic is interim coach James Borrego. Borrego, like Vaughn, comes from the Gregg Popovich coaching tree in San Antonio.
He started as Spurs’ video coordinator and eventually moved on to take assistant coaching jobs in New Orleans and here in Orlando. Despite reports that a new coach, potentially former Magic point guard Scott Skiles, would be installed after the All-Star break, Hennigan made no inkling that a quick switch is in the works.
“We’re going to take it day by day,” said Hennigan. “James Borrego is our coach. We’re supporting JB. Our players are supporting JB. I’m not going to get specifics about anything relative to a coaching situation other than that JB is our coach and that is how we are moving forward.”
With the majority of the assistant coaching staff wiped out along with Vaughn, player development coaches Laron Profit and Jay Hernandez will take an elevated role alongside Borrego on the bench. That smaller group will be tasked with big challenges as the team tries to show signs of life in the season’s final months.
While Borrego admits that immediate offensive changes are hard to make, he vows to work on rebooting the Magic’s defensive mentality.
“The defense is going to be our focus. We’re going to look to that side of the ball. Our challenge will be to the guys to individually and collectively have a pride again about our defensive end. For whatever reason, we just haven’t been very efficient on the defensive end.”
As Vaughn goes out the door, a natural question has been whether his rebuilding tag-team partner Hennigan is soon to follow. That appears to be only fan conjecture for now after Martins reaffirmed the organization’s belief in the various moves their young GM has made.
The message presented Thursday was unified and clear. With the current pieces put in place and some additional tweaks down the road, the Magic are bound to be on the upswing sooner rather than later.
“This is just a short bump in the road,” said Martins. “This can easily get back on track because we believe that we’ve got a great deal of talent on our roster. That’s not to say that we don’t need to continue to grow that roster. We’re realistic about that, but we believe in our players.”
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