Orlando Magic’s Jamahl Mosley cannot take first year for granted

The Orlando Magic have found their coach in Jamahl Mosley.

After a month-long search, the team found their coach to guide their rebuild. In Mosley, they found someone who has a strong player development background and a strong reputation for forging relationships with his players.

It seems like Mosley checked all the boxes for the team. He has extensive experience in the NBA — working with legendary coaches like George Karl and Rick Carlisle. And he has always had a focus on working individually with players.

Rick Carlisle told Josh Robbins of The Athletic he sent Jeff Weltman the video of the Dallas Mavericks celebrating Jamahl Mosley’s win over the New York Knicks when Carlisle had to sit out due to a false positive COVID test.

Rick Carlisle recommended Jamahl Mosley for the job — negating some reporting that Carlisle and Mosley had some tension before Carlisle’s resignation and promotion of Jason Kidd for the job.

Everything points toward the Magic getting a first-time coach who is capable of handling the job and has all the tools to handle a young roster.

Of course, saying that at this point and winning Monday’s press conference is a very different story from delivering a team that will grow into a playoff team and eventually a championship contender. Rebuilds, as the Magic know better than anyone in the last decade, are never straight lines and nothing is guaranteed.

The Orlando Magic are starting a rebuild and they have no time to waste. Jamahl Mosley needs to put his imprint on the team immediately and start working.

One of the bigger lessons of that rebuild remains how important the early years of it can be. It might be easy to throw away that first year as the beginning of a rebuild instead of a true foundation-setting season.

Mosley is going to have to step in and set his imprint immediately. The next season may not be measured in wins and losses, but the team still needs to make progress.

This was a mistake during the team’s last rebuild.

Orlando hired an inexperienced Jacque Vaughn (he had just two years on the San Antonio Spurs bench) to lead the last rebuild. The first year was not much in the way of progressing or building. The team did not have any of the pieces they would build with eventually — the Magic were still a mix of holdover veterans from the Dwight Howard era and players acquired from that trade.

But they still needed an identity. And Vaughn struggled to build a culture that helped make the most of those players. It was never clear what the team’s goals were other than collecting losses for ping pong balls.

But even with a team that included Victor Oladipo, Nikola Vucevic and Tobias Harris, a solid young core by today’s standards, the Magic did not seem to have a clear direction. Roles were not well-defined and the team played at odds with each other — as both Oladipo and Harris admitted after departing from the teams.

The Magic’s most successful year in that early era was a 19-13 start to the 2016 season with Scott Skiles as head coach. the team had already moved on from Vaugn.

Skiles established structure and created roles. But he also butted heads with everyone in the organization — from players to management.

The team suffered through a two-win January, fell out of the playoffs and took a huge gamble trading Harris for cap room during the crazed summer of 2016 — it turned into Bismack Biyombo, D.J. Augustin and Jeff Green.

The Magic lost alignment throughout their franchise and the disunity showed as the team’s rebuild blew up.

Orlando certainly is starting from a different place. Instead of having a group of veterans left over, the team has already made the transition to young players. Perhaps even too young.

But that does not mean the situation is any less fraught.

The team still needs to buy in and establish a new identity that the team can build from moving forward. This is perhaps Mosley’s most important role.

Orlando Magic

The team brought him in for his player development reputation and relationships. But he also has to coach a team that will one day win again. And the team cannot lose sight of that goal.

The Magic will not — and probably should not unless the team surprises — measure the 2022 season by wins and losses.

The measure instead will be the team’s progress and how young players improve through the course of the season. It will be on whether the team is forming an identity and looking like a team that can one day grow beyond the rebuilding phase.

These are things that should not wait for the team to have all its talent aligned. This is something Mosley has to do immediately.

The Magic are an unformed mass. So if the team finds that some of their young players do not fit the vision Jamahl Mosley — and by extension Jeff Weltman — has for the team, they should feel empowered to shape it to that form. It is not something that has to happen this offseason, but the Magic need to mold the players into the players they want and the team into the team they want.

That process is not something they should wait on. Orlando should empower Mosley to form the team he wants.

They made this hire for a reason beyond simple player development. Player development has to come with an eye toward building a winning team. Mosley surely has to have some idea of what he wants his team to play like.

By the end of his first season, the Magic should not only expect to see players improve but also the outlines of what this team will play like when they are ready to compete — perhaps even as soon as the 2023 season.

Plenty of people are describing this job as low-pressure for Mosley. There is no doubt about that. Orlando is probably not expecting to win much the next two seasons.

The Magic have to make smart picks — both in the Draft and which young players they want to pick along with veterans to support the roster. They have to provide Mosley the players. But they have empowered him to lay this foundation one way or another.

But these early years are probably as vital as any. They will lay the foundations for the team’s future and who they will become.

And messing up the next season or failing to build the foundation will put the team in a hole it already knows is too difficult to climb out without some intense luck.