What Does Nostalgia Buy You?
Martins, a former PR man, thought this would make for a great story. Martins believes he can sell the casual Magic fan on the Skiles’ hire because he was a former player. Heck, even the official Web site for the Orlando Magic immediately put together video packages and other things for Skiles, posted after he was hired.
What accompanied all of that nostalgia? A banner to renew your season tickets now.
The sense from Magic fans on social media and Twitter is they are not too keen on the idea of hiring Skiles. Multiple media outlets suggested this hire was Martins and ownership’s doing and fans had caught on to that fact. It certainly did not hurt Skiles at the end.
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These ideas lead to some interesting comments from both Martins and Skiles during Skiles’ introductory presser as the team looked to dissuade the notion he was hired solely on nostalgia. Skiles came out early saying: “Alex made it clear this was Rob’s call and Rob made it very clear that this was Rob’s call.”
Martins continued in discussing the process of bringing in Skiles. Martins said he told Hennigan: “We’re not going to talk about Scott. You’re going to go meet Scott and you’re going to ultimately come to your own conclusions about Scott and then we’ll compare notes. I truly wanted this to be an objective decision about his coaching ability.
“I truly wanted this to be an objective decision about his (Skiles’) coaching ability and I didn’t want my personal past with Scott and my experience with him having been a player here to enter into it,” Martins continued. “We truly had to find the right coach for this team. Now, at the end of the day, he’s a former player, he’s one of the handful of most beloved players in the history of this franchise and it’s icing on the cake for our fans that he can come back and be on our bench. But that wasn’t the reason why Scott was hired. He was hired because he’s a great coach with NBA experience and he fits all of the attributes we were trying to build this team around.”
With some basic knowledge of public relations it was clear the Magic were worried about the message that was spreading.
Martins and company may have hijacked Rob Hennigan’s process, even if it was just in making the initial suggestion and pushing Skiles into the candidate pool.
This is where the Magic tipped their hand, if they wanted to make these rumors go away, you would not give them any credibility by addressing them.
Not only did the Magic address them, they immediately addressed and repeatedly made the point Martins’ hiring Skiles was not true. This strong denial only feeds the conspiracy theory that Orlando’s hire was a machination of Martins’ rather than the “process” of Rob Hennigan.
Next: The difference in the process the second time around