One NBA head coach may be paying the price for his team’s underachieving this season.
Figures around the league are monitoring the Orlando Magic as a potential team to watch when it comes to a head coaching change in the offseason, Brian Windhorst of ESPN reported Thursday on “NBA Today.” Jamahl Mosley is currently the head coach of the Magic.
“It’s dominated the conversations I’ve had within the league for the last month-and-a-half,” said Windhorst, per BasketNews. “There’s potentially significant moving at the coaching ranks, and Orlando is the team people are watching.”
Mosley, 47, is in his fifth season as head coach of the Magic after taking over in 2021. Prior to that, Mosley served as an assistant coach in the NBA for roughly a decade-and-a-half.
But Mosley’s overall record in Orlando is only 184-220 (.455). He has also managed to bring the Magic to the postseason just twice and has zero playoff series wins to show for it.
This season, Orlando was supposed to be a win-now team as well in a seemingly wide-open Eastern Conference, especially after giving up four unprotected first-round picks in a summer trade for Desmond Bane. Instead though, the Magic are currently in the play-in tournament at ninth in the conference (40-36).
It has not helped either that Orlando has been bitten by the injury bug (with 20-point-per-game scorer Franz Wagner notably appearing in just 29 games this season due to an ankle issue). But we previously heard that Mosley wasn’t seeing eye-to-eye with Magic star Paolo Banchero too, so it may not be surprising to see Orlando go in a different direction at head coach come the offseason.
