Magic fire GM Hennigan
Magic fire GM Rob Hennigan after another dismal season
The Orlando Magic ended Rob Hennigan’s five-year tenure as general manager Thursday, a day after the team finished the season 29-53 and failed to reach the playoffs for a fifth consecutive season.
The Orlando Magic fired Rob Hennigan on Thursday, ending his five-year tenure as the team’s general manager.
The move occurred after the Magic finished their 2016-17 season with a 29-53 record and failed to reach the playoffs for a fifth consecutive year.
Even worse, the rebuilding plan that Hennigan shepherded — a plan that CEO Alex Martins and the DeVos family implicitly endorsed when they hired Hennigan — has lost all traction, with no light at the end of the tunnel, leaving the franchise no clear pathway back to relevance.
“I’m not going to sit here and point to individual instances or transactions or individual decisions that Rob made,” Martins said. “We’re just not at a place where we need to be. We’re culturally not focused on winning in the way that we need to be and we also have not made the right decisions from a roster standpoint to be able to compete for a playoff spot.”
The franchise could seek to hire a well-known figure as president of basketball operations and have that hire pick a new general manager to do the day-to-day work. Or the team could decline to hire a president of basketball operations and instead hire a less-experienced person to serve as general manager.
Sources tell the Orlando Sentinel that Magic officials had interest in former NBA All-Star and former Magic player Grant Hill to
work as president of basketball operations. But ESPN reported that Hill has no interest in the job. Joining the Magic would require Hill to divest his small ownership stake in the Atlanta Hawks.
Candidates for the general manager job likely will include Detroit Pistons associate general manager and former Magic player Pat Garrity and Golden State Warriors assistant general manager Travis Schlenk.
Martins said he has not assembled a comprehensive list of candidates yet. But Martins added that some of the people already on the list work for playoff teams and will not be available for interviews until those teams are eliminated. That statement could indicate the Magic have interest in speaking to general managers of one or more playoff teams.
Vogel staying
Martins made clear that coach Frank Vogel, who just finished his first season with the Magic, will remain. Martins added the Magic will not have a coach who also serves as president of basketball operations.
Vogel said he has no interest in a dual role, anyway.
“I’m a basketball coach, and I’m looking forward to Alex getting a general manager in here to work together with [him],” Vogel said. “It’s a difficult thing to do both. You’ve got to separate your emotions. A lot of times as a coach, every other game you want to trade a different player, and obviously you can’t do that. I like the coach/GM dynamic.”
Martins also said the team “potentially” could hire an outside firm to help identify candidates.
In addition to firing Hennigan, the Magic also fired assistant general manager Scott Perry.
Magic assistant GM Matt Lloyd has been named the team’s interim GM, and Martins said Lloyd will be a candidate for the permanent job. Lloyd, who has headed the Magic’s scouting department for the last five years, will focus on preparing the Magic for the 2017 NBA Draft.
Asked about the firings of Hennigan and Perry, Magic swingman Evan Fournier said, “When you don’t win, you know you’ve got to make moves, and usually the ones that go first are either coaches or the general manager. That’s just the way things go. It’s unfortunate. But that’s how it goes, man. That’s the business.”
The Magic hired Hennigan in June 2012 when he was 30 years old.
In a statement released to the Sentinel, Hennigan thanked the DeVos family, Martins, coaches, players and fans “for a wonderful opportunity” and wished the Magic luck.
Hennigan arrived as the Magic faced a crisis: All-Star center Dwight Howard was demanding a trade.
Hennigan traded Howard in a complicated fourteam deal — a trade in which Hennigan wisely avoided acquiring often-injured Los Angeles Lakers center Andrew Bynum.
Then, the Magic sought to bottom out in hopes of securing the best possible NBA Draft Lottery odds so they could draft players who potentially could become franchise cornerstones.
None of the players the Magic drafted under Hennigan’s watch have developed into All-Stars — at least not yet. Indeed, when the vast majority of NBA scouts assessed the Magic’s 2016-17 roster, they saw many players within the team’s nucleus who, at best, would be the sixth or seventh men on high-level playoff teams.
Little lottery luck
To be sure, some of that is not Hennigan’s fault. The Magic never received the lottery luck they hoped for when they tanked the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons. And perhaps the Magic’s long-range outlook would be much different now if it had only received the fourth pick in 2015 instead of the fifth pick; it would have allowed the team to select highly regarded power forward Kristaps Porzingis at No. 4 instead of struggling Mario Hezonja at No. 5.
Yet the Magic also have done a poor job of developing their young players. Hennigan’s decision not to retain or pursue high-level veterans early in the rebuilding process hindered the rebuild. Youngsters such as Victor Oladipo, Elfrid Payton, Nikola Vucevic and Maurice Harkless had minimal competition for playing time from high-quality veteran players who would have forced Oladipo, Payton, Vucevic and Harkless to raise their games. There were other issues. Hennigan’s decision to hire Jacque Vaughn as head coach in 2012 was disastrous. It would have been difficult for any coach to win with the players Vaughn was provided, but Vaughn didn’t provide the accountability the young players needed.
In addition, Hennigan did not require Vaughn to fill out his assistant-coaching staff with highly experienced assistant coaches who could have helped develop the young players, would have helped Vaughn build a winning culture and would have helped Vaughn with the inevitable X’s-andO’s learning curve that all inexperienced head coaches face.
Clashes with Skiles
When the Magic hired Scott Skiles in 2015 — a move made with Martins’ strong backing — Hennigan and Skiles clashed repeatedly, and Skiles ultimately resigned after one season in the job.
A few of Hennigan’s recent decisions backfired badly.
In Feb. 2016, Hennigan traded Tobias Harris to the Detroit Pistons for Ersan Ilyasova and Brandon Jennings. Harris is not a star player and trading him away opened playing time for Aaron Gordon, but the Magic should have received a better return for Harris.
Last June, the Magic made a draft-night trade to acquire power forward Serge Ibaka from the Oklahoma City Thunder for Oladipo, Ilyasova and the draft rights to the 11th overall pick, Domantas Sabonis. That move invited criticism because Ibaka’s defense had declined in recent years and because Ibaka tends to be aloof with teammates. Ibaka also had only one year left on his contract.
But Hennigan subsequently acquired yet another big man during the free-agency period when he signed center Bismack Biyombo to a four-year deal worth $17 million per season.
With Ibaka, Biyombo and Vucevic on the roster, the Magic went big while most NBA teams accelerated their transitions to smallball lineups. These days, versatile lineups with high-level outside shooters are in vogue, and teams that don’t have enough quickness or 3-point shooting face major disadvantages.
Instead, the Magic almost exclusively employed lineups with two big men playing simultaneously, and the Magic struggled to defend quicker, more agile teams. Playing two big men at once also forced Vogel to play Gordon at small forward instead of Gordon’s more natural position of power forward.
Throughout his tenure, Hennigan had no qualms about drafting players with questionable shooting skills — Oladipo, Gordon and Payton — thinking that shooting can improve over time. But in the short term, the Magic were left with an alarming lack of long-range shooters in an era when the 3-point shot has never been more important.
On Feb. 14, the Magic traded Ibaka to the Toronto Raptors for swingman Terrence Ross and a 2017 latefirst-round pick.
But despite a few impressive performances after the trade, the Magic still struggled.
Indeed, the problem wasn’t just that the Magic lost a total of 53 games overall. It was how they lost many of those games. The Magic lost eight games by a margin of 20-29 points and eight more by at least 30 points.
The struggles demoralized fans.
The team’s highest-level decision-makers, the DeVos family and Martins, concluded they could not sell to their fan base another season of Hennigan as their general manager.
Starting over
Major questions still remain.
As CEO, Martins played the integral role in hiring Hennigan. He also endorsed Hennigan’s overall strategy and also supervised Hennigan.
What will Martins’ role be going forward in basketball decisions?
Will any big-name, established candidate want a job as the Magic’s president of basketball operations or GM if he doesn’t report solely to the DeVos family?
And, finally, how will Hennigan’s successor make up the talent gap that separates the Magic from playoff teams?
Martins and the DeVos family determined Hennigan couldn’t make up that gap.
“We took a chance on Rob, and he was dealt a difficult hand when he first arrived here,” Martins said. “Some would say that he didn’t have the benefit of luck in the NBA lottery, which is true. But sometimes you have to make your own luck.”