Orlando Magic coach Jamahl Mosley had a clear message for his team after their season ended.
Nobody was happy with their five-game series loss to the Boston Celtics. But there was no lamenting the lost potential of their season. They seemed to take it as a challenge instead. If they are the team they think they are, the loss and the trials of the season should be a call to rise against the challenge of the next season.
The message from Mosley was a simple one: Pressure is a privilege.
The expectations the Magic failed to meet and the hopes the entire team and franchise believed they could achieve were a privilege. They came from a belief in what they could accomplish.
Orlando's front office challenged itself to make big moves to take this team to its next step. They seemingly succeeded, swinging for the fences to acquire Desmond Bane and signing veteran guard Tyus Jones. That, with the max extension for Paolo Banchero, has the Magic talking a big game ahead of the 2026 season.
Pressure is a privilege. And it is a privilege that Mosley will be feeling for the first time.
The Magic, with their open championship ambitions, have moved out of the rebuild phase and into the winning phase of their development. That is an important transition for the franchise.
But it is an important transition for Mosley too.
President of basketball operations Jeff Weltman delivered this offseason with moves that improved the team's offense and overall talent level. But even he admitted he is just handing off the baton. Success this season will come down to how the players come together and how their coach leads them.
There are still a lot of questions about how the Magic take their next steps. How Mosley moves from a development-focused coach to a winning coach will be the biggest question this offseason.
"Good coaches can get fired," Rob Mahoney said on The Ringer NBA Show's Group Chat. "Jamahl Mosley is a good coach, and I think the outcome of the Magic's season where it's not quite good enough, and he ends up being let go. I think pushing things in the way that they did with Bane brings everything to a head in terms of those expectations."
Mosley said it himself that pressure is a privilege. This is what success and the potential for success invites. And that is going to be centered on several parts of the roster, especially on its coach.
Mosley must turn his development history into results
When the Orlando Magic hired Jamahl Mosley after the 2021 season, they knew they were starting a complete teardown. They were in a rebuilding mode, looking to go younger and bring players along slowly.
The Magic hired Mosley, a known player development coach with the Dallas Mavericks among his other stops, to help foster the team through this early development period. They knew they needed a coach who could connect with players and focus on the big picture even while losses piled up early in the process.
They needed someone who could instill belief more than anything else.
Mosley built a staff that was focused on this player development. He loaded it with coaches who had been longtime NBA assistant coaches with G-League head coaching experience, too. They were there to help foster the early stages of that growth.
The team grew slowly. But even in the early days, it was clear there was a level of buy-in with the team. That grew into the 2024 Playoff berth and the place the Magic are in now.
Still, one of the criticisms against Mosley was that he was focused more on long-term development rather than maximizing wins in the short term. Not that the two cannot go hand in hand.
Mosley's strengths are more in the relationships with players and developing them rather than the short-term concerns of winning games. There have been questions about some of his lineup managements, Xs and Os to try to get more out of the offense, and timeout management.
Still, the Magic have been successful. They improve by more than 10 wins after each of his team's first two offseasons. The Orlando Magic pushed the Cleveland Cavaliers to seven games in his playoff series. He must be doing something right.
Undoubtedly, Mosley has been successful at this stage of the development program. The Magic have gotten to this point.
Mosley is already planning the next stage
Jamahl Mosley has always been quick to give credit to his coaching staff for all the team's successes. That is part of who he is.
It would make sense then that this is the first place you would look to see some evolution in the Magic.
Orlando hired two new assistant coaches who hint at the team's preparations for playing at this new level. Both should fortify the team's perceived experience weaknesses in the staff.
The Orlando Magic hired former Milwaukee Bucks assistant coach Joe Prunty. Prunty is a far more experienced coach on winning teams who has a good relationship with some elite players and is considered a strong offensive game planner.
That fills a weakness for the Magic overall.
So too does the hire of God Shamgod. While Shamgod is a development coach, his relationships with elite players like Kyrie Irving suggest he is focused on development at an elite level with veteran players. With the Magic going without a traditional point guard, having an elite ball-handling coach will help, too.
The Magic took their offseason seriously on the court. It would seem Mosley took his offseason seriously off the court, too.
But just like everything else, the proof will come on the court when the season begins. And this season will be a major test for Mosley just as it is a major test to see if the Magic can take a step closer to contention.
The team expects to take that step. And if things do not quite work out that way, it could mean the Magic make another step to get there.