Who is James Borrego as coach?
The Orlando Magic are getting to know their new coach. After one game, it is clear he has a slightly different take on things. The team is pulling together.
In the next few hours and the next few days, the Orlando Magic will begin to learn exactly who this new man leading the team is.
James Borrego has been a career assistant throughout all phases of basketball, having started as a video coordinator with the Spurs in 2003 and spent seven years in San Antonio rising through the ranks to assistant coach before joining Monty Williams’ staff in New Orleans.
He then came to Orlando to be part of Jacque Vaughn’s staff.
He probably did not see his ascendancy to the lead chair this way. And Borrego is finding out how to be the leader of a team and create an identity as a coach.
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“I’m really just trying to learn this team right now,” Borrego said. “My focus is being there for them, trying to get their minds right. I haven’t really had time to think about where I’m at or how I feel. It’s really just about moving the team forward. The season doesn’t stop.”
Borrego certainly took some influence from Jacque Vaughn. Like Vaughn, he is a quiet measured coach it seems. Aaron Gordon said after the game that Borrego would come into huddles and ask the team what they were seeing out there. This was something Vaughn had done in the past too, but the new voice brought some poignancy to it.
Gordon said Borrego was very encouraging from the sideline and trying to inject some more enthusiasm into the team. That was plainly seen as the bench would erupt even for the simplest plays. Tobias Harris said the team’s energy was at an all-time high.
After the anxious first half, it all added up to a win. Did Borrego play a role? Certainly some.
“He acts pretty well,” Kyle O’Quinn said after the game Friday. “He talks low, but you can feel it. You can feel his energy. He wants to win just like us. If you know JB, you know how he speaks.”
Borrego does have that quiet fortitude about him as he paced the sideline. There was certainly a lot of chaos going on the floor, some that Borrego probably did not expect to deal with or even know how to handle as a first time head coach.
Nikola Vucevic said Borrego did not change his approach in the huddle Friday night. He remained positive and the team’s biggest cheerleader. His main key early on was calming the team down and getting them to focus on getting through the full 48 minutes of the game.
That was something Jacque Vaughn struggled to get his team to do. They rarely made the turnaround they made Friday night against the Lakers.
The fire within Borrego also exists too. He was whistling to get his player’s attention on the sideline and he certainly put an emphasis in his first meeting with the team and shootaround on defense and energy.
Now, the team gets to have a practice before the next game as Borrego continues to balance preparing for games with instituting a new foundation for what is now his team.
That is not an easy balance and won Borrego is having to do on the fly. He and his now truncated coaching staff are still figuring out how to divide the scouting duties.
Borrego said he was still taking things day-by-day and focusing on how to help the team improve consistently. Borrego enjoys the benefit of having a personal relationship with many of the players as an assistant coach with the team before. What has changed is trying to figure out a rhythm together. Borrego has to learn still how to manage a game as a head coach.
The task of improving is still on the players, and the task of getting through this falls on the veterans to keep the team pushing through these uncertain times. Few players have experienced a coaching change like this and so Borrego has to rely on his enthusiasm and positivity along with the togetherness of his team to make things work.
“It’s definitely a new experience,” Tobias Harris said. “The 15 guys here have to pull each other along. We have to really encourage each other and get through it the best way that we can.”
It is still quite unclear what kind of coach James Borrego is going to be when it is all said and done. It has been only one game and Borrego has been on the job for about 48 hours. He still has lots of room for growth.