Culture is a favored buzz word among executives in the NBA. Undoubtedly, the Orlando Magic have struggled to establish this and get on the same page.
The Orlando Magic have talked about culture for much of the past five years.
It was something Magic CEO Alex Martins talked about as the team began transitioning to a new general manager and a new coach. It was something general manager Rob Hennigan talked about extensively when describing what he hoped to build for this team. It was something Jacque Vaughn spoke about as he tried to lay the foundations for the team.
Scott Skiles repeated them. Bismack Biyombo has talked about it. As has Victor Oladipo and Aaron Gordon and Tobias Harris.
Certainly, when Jeff Weltman is officially introduced as the Magic’s new president of basketball operations Wednesday, he too will speak about culture.
This abstract term has been one of the obsessions throughout the league. Everyone is trying to create the kind of self-perpetuating culture that a team like the San Antonio Spurs has. They always seem to pick the right player, find the right fit and succeed on the court. Everything works together in unison.
To be sure, after winning 29 games last year and moving in a different direction, the Magic are in search of a base to create a culture. They are trying to establish an identity they can build upon and build around to create what Martins often calls a “sustainable winning” program.
Weltman will have to be the one who establishes the base with the decisions he makes at the top. The Magic have talked about culture for much of the past five years. But they have done little to implement it.
This failure as much as anything is why Hennigan got his walking orders the day after the season ended. Figuring out where to pick up the pieces and start this process again is the problem facing the Magic this summer.
The truth is Weltman and the front office is just one piece to the puzzle. Culture comes from every part of the organization. It works when everyone is working toward the same goal, completely trusting every part of the machine is working and doing its job.
It comes when ownership can trust its basketball operations staff to put together a quality product on the floor. That is the role ownership must play — supporting the direction the team is heading. At a certain point in the last five years, that appeared to change. When that trust is lost, the house begins to collapse.
It comes when management builds a team that fits the coach’s eye and puts together a roster that complements and accentuates the players on the team.
During the Magic’s rebuild, this part was certainly missing. Orlando did a good job collecting talented players. And Hennigan certainly had a type in athletic, defensive-minded players. That process seemed not to work out or gel properly. He was never able to find the supplemental players to make the whole system work. And the league changed too much around him.
That process seemed not to work out or gel properly. He was never able to find the supplemental players to make the whole system work, adding in the veterans and role players to accentuate the players he acquired through the draft. Instead, it seemed the Magic brought in players and devised a plan that only got in each other’s way.
The synergy and trust between ownership and management had eroded. The balance was off. The culture did not prevail.
Culture comes from the coach. The coach has to instill the belief in the system, trusting management to provide the right players and working on the same wavelength to implement the organization’s overall plan.
The coach is the one who sets the tone. He is the one who ultimately puts all the pieces together, taking all the ingredients and turning it into a final product.
A coach working against management or unable to establish the culture the organization agrees upon can be disastrous. This has been a part of the formula the Magic have missed throughout the last five years.
Orlando Magic
Vaughn struggled to move from encouraging young coach to accountability-holding winning coach. The team never turned the corner with him at the helm. Skiles brought with him the demand for results. But he clearly was not on the same page with upper management and the franchise’s direction. The Magic have acknowledged some of these disagreements.
Orlando has never had everything moving in the right direction. Coach Frank Vogel came in a bit too late. Management had already lost its culture in the pursuit of immediate results. The whole thing was collapsing.
The Magic are committed to Vogel. They believe he can establish that culture the team has been missing, at least on the court. Putting him with a management group that believes in him and his experience with the players on the roster already will help the team push itself forward.
The final piece is, of course, the players. There is no success without the players. They have to buy in and believe in what the coach is trying to build. The coach, as an extension of management’s vision, builds the overall vision for the team.
Without the players buying into this vision and believing in it, there is no success. With so much going wrong above the players in establishing the team’s culture, it is no wonder things did not take. It is no wonder players did not completely buy in. And, ultimately, when things went wrong, there was nothing to fall back on.
Culture is that ultimate backstop. It is not something that can be blinked into existence, though. The Magic learned that foremost in the last five years. Saying you are building a culture is very different than actually instilling that culture.
And that is the table set for Weltman as he prepares to take over the Magic. He has to try and pull all these strands together to build — or rebuild — the Magic’s culture. Getting everyone on the same page and establishing trust comes from a clear vision and, ultimately, results on the court.
The Magic have some pieces to this. They feel confident Vogel is a strong coach who can work on the ground to build the kind of team their new hire envisions. The creation of a president of basketball operations suggests ownership is willing to cede some oversight control and invest in a new leader for the team. The Magic believe they have players who are ready to turn the corner and accomplish their goals.
It is now up to Weltman to pull all these strings together and establish the kind of culture that builds a winner. He will certainly talk about the kind of culture he wants to build.
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The Magic will want to see some action, though. And how quickly he forms this vision and begins molding the team to it — and how quickly he gets buy-in from everyone in the organization — will determine whether he is successful in finally building a winning culture in Orlando.