Orlando Magic hire new athletic training staff

The Orlando Magic added an important behind-the-scenes piece to their puzzle, announcing the hiring of their new training staff under David Tenney.

The Orlando Magic announced they have hired new members of their basketball operations department, adding a new training staff to the organization.

The team had previously let go of much of its training staff from last year as president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman and high performance director David Tenney began to sink their teeth into the team.

The Magic hired Tenney before last season and he began to take over many of the player health decisions. As Orlando reformed its organization, it seemed like every aspect was under review. That included the training staff.

Orlando announced it has hired Ernest Eugene as the team’s head athletic trainer. Eugene had spent the last four seasons as the assistant athletic director of personal training for the Virginia Tech Hokies. He worked as the head athletic trainer for the Marquette Golden Eagles basketball team before that. He was an assistant athletic trainer for the Washington Wizards from 2003-08 before that.

The team also announced it has hired Luke Storey as its head athletic trainer. Storey comes from the famed P3 lab, which uses advanced metrics and measurements to study athleticism and create more efficient workouts. Aaron Gordon has trained at P3 before — they claimed his athletic measurements were some of the best they had ever seen. Storey was P3’s director of performance.

In Tenney’s time as a trainer for the Seattle Sounders, he was known for using these biometric data in new ways and applying it to soccer. Tenney helped found a sports training analytics conference and sports science conference. He has been on the cutting edge of this kind of research on the team side for some time.

It makes sense Tenney would want to go in this direction as he remakes the training staff and builds his team.

The team also hired Sameer Mehta as the team’s physical therapist and Nathan Spencer as the team’s performance and rehabilitation coach.

Both positions could figure to be important, especially after how much the team dealt with injuries last year.

While fans will likely not see much of these guys publicly, they will be part of an important team for Tenney and the Magic to get the most out of their athletes physically. This is an important addition tot he team and an important behind-the-scenes announcement for the Magic.

Injuries are random. No one can blame the athletic training staff for the rash of injuries the Magic experienced last year. The team had been relatively healthy under virtually the same staff for much of the last decade.

But clearly, the Magic are showing they want to be on the cutting edge. They want to rethink the way they approach team performance. That was shown when the team hired Tenney last year. Now the team has a staff to match.

Next: 2018 NBA Draft Preview: Who is Trae Young?

And Orlando can focus again on building the team with its support staff in place.