What will be different?
This is the ultimate question for the Orlando Magic entering this season.
Despite a second straight trip to the Play-In Tournament, the Magic maintained most of their roster from last season, adding only Nikola Vucevic. This is essentially the same team.
The Magic are still expressing confidence in what they can do this season. The first bet is on better health after a nightmarish two seasons dealing with injuries to their two best players. The next bet is on their new coach.
Orlando believes the team needed a new voice and a new person to put the team in a different context. And the team believes Sweeney is the guy.
What nobody really knows is how Sweeney will change things.
Everyone knows the one thing they want changed. And it does seem like this is a direction Sweeney will take this team.
But coaching a team is a much different task. Sean Sweeney is working to build off the foundation that was left him by Jamahl Mosley while building something of his own. His job will be to expand and redefine a team without cracking its foundations.
For the Magic to be successful, they will need to define roles clearly. And that seems to be a central theme for Sweeney as he takes over.
It worked in San Antonio, and it seems to be how Sweeney wants to organize his staff and his team. Everyone will have their part to play.
"I've thought about that ad nauseum," Sweene said at his introductory press conference. "Being in San Antonio and the way Mitch [Johnson] put together his staff and defining roles and empowering those around him to be great coaches. That's something that I've taken with me and want to do a great job of here."
If that is the approach, then roles will play a key factor in this new era of Magic basketball. And it will be vital to Sweeney's approach.
The way things were
This is not to say Jamahl Mosley's approach was the wrong way to go at things.
Mosley was hired to build the foundations of a team and foster growth in a team that was not expected to win very much. He was about teaching good habits and good thoughts that the team could then use to grow into a winning team.
That philosophy worked. It built a team that sacrificed for each other and played with intense effort. It was a good base for the team to grow and learn.
It gave the Magic a reputation it could build on.
"What stands out ot me is, any time we played Orlando, they were always a hard-playing team," Sweeney said during his introductory press conference. "Competitive, tough, that's something there. There's obviously talent here. A number of talented guys that I'm excited to coach. In the conversations that I've had with a number of players, guys are hungry. They're ready to win. They want to keep building on what they've done."
The team hit a roadblock during the past two seasons. They hit a ceiling, and they resisted their offense's style.
Mosley's offense was very read-based. It relied on everyone being able to make decisions and work with the ball. The ball would find who it needed to find. It was amorphous and would help the team when they got to the playoffs.
But the Magic never seemed to have the personnel to run this offense at its peak. And the Magic bogged down unable to find ways to get through and score consistently.
They needed some sophistication and structure to try to maximize players and put them in the best positions to succeed.
This is why more clearly defined roles could benefit the team. Putting up guardrails and defining what players should have the freedom to do could help them take the next step. It should allow them to focus and specialize on what they are best at.
That is at least what the Magic hope. And the structure of Sweeney's offense is still to be determined ahead of training camp and its unveiling during the preseason and the regular season.
The basics of Sweeney's foundation
The Orlando Magic are still waiting to see how Sean Sweeney ties this team together.
He is focused on the big picture and knows how offense and defense are tied together. The Magic are not forgetting their chosen identity and what helped lift them to a playoff team.
Sweeney seems to be a much more focused and directed coach. He is going to be more detail-oriented in where he wants players to be and how they move.
Everyone knows the team will still be focused on its defense. That is still essential to the team's identity. Everyone is expecting a faster-paced offense with more direction and purpose.
But how that comes together is uncertain.
Sweeney spelled out what was important to him when he was introduced as the team's next head coach in June. A lot of that conversation was some generalities that you would expect when a new coach is hired. But it is clear what he wants his team to be about.
"Where it starts offensively is we want to be efficient and get as many opportunitis as we can," Sweeney said during his introductory press conference in June. "We want to activate all five guys. We want to be a team with great spacing, organization and discipline that way we can create advantages and then whwen we get those advantages, we want to keep them. We want to make invisible plays -- not only the plays we see in the stat sheet, but the ones that we don't see. Things that allow others to be successful."
The Magic hope to use their defense to feed their offense, as most teams do. A big part of last year's struggles was the team's slip defensively. And the Magic will be working just as hard to rebuild the defense.
But even that will be different. Sweeney will define different roles and responsibilities. Everyone will be trying to learn from each other.
This is all to say that everyone is expecting something different to build on what worked before. But it is clear the Magic need some change too.
And the extent of that change remains unknown. Just as much as the idea of how must structure and what roles will define this team and Sweeney's Magic.
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