Florida State coaches
say the Orlando Magic did a thorough vetting of Jonathan Isaac before drafting him recently.
If Jonathan Isaac becomes a star, the Orlando Magic will owe a deep debt of gratitude to at least two people who no longer work on the team’s basketball operations staff.
Florida State coaches said two members of the Magic front office — former scouting coordinator John Halas and former video analyst for personnel Brad Jones — visited Tallahassee in early May and spent a day speaking with people in and around the Seminoles’ basketball program to learn as much as possible about Isaac.
Halas and Jones left no stone unturned. They interviewed a wide array of people, ranging from FSU’s coaches to FSU’s equipment manager.
“They touched base with everybody: the compliance people, the student-athlete development people,” said FSU associate head coach Stan Jones, who is not related to
“Honestly, nothing came up with this kid that would give us any cause for concern. To the contrary, [there were] nothing but raves about him across the board.” Jeff Weltman, Magic president of basketball operations
Brad Jones.
“They talked to tutors,” Stan Jones added. “They talked to academic support people. There’s a whole list of people that they went through. The strength coach. Trainers. Anybody that [Isaac] worked with during the year — they were trying to hit all of them.”
Just how much work did Halas and Brad Jones do? Put it this way: They even interviewed FSU’s longtime deputy director of sports information, Chuck Walsh, who works as a team spokesman and as a liaison between the men’s basketball team and the media.
Halas’ and Jones’ trip to Tallahassee was a critical piece to the extensive scouting the Magic had begun during the tenure of former general manager Rob Hennigan.
The Magic fired Hennigan and assistant GM Scott Perry on April 13.
CEO Alex Martins put assistant GM Matt Lloyd temporarily in charge of the basketball operations department. Halas’ and Jones’ trip to FSU occurred during Lloyd’s brief stint as the acting GM.
The Magic hired Jeff Weltman as their new president of basketball operations on May 22. That same day, the team laid off at least nine members of the team’s basketball operations department, including Halas and Jones.
The day after the Magic selected Isaac sixth overall in the 2017 NBA Draft, Weltman praised the work the prior staff did on Isaac.
“The staff was extremely thorough,” Weltman said. “They did a great job doing background work. Honestly, nothing came up with this kid that would give us any cause for concern. To the contrary, [there were] nothing but raves about him across the board.”
The Magic also benefitted from having someone on their staff, Adetunji Adedipe, who had previously worked at IMG Academy, the school where Isaac did a post-graduate year.
Isaac did not work out for the Magic in the weeks leading up to the draft.
A day after the draft, Weltman acknowledged that he and GM John Hammond met with Isaac for about two hours in South Florida prior to the draft.
“There’s a lot of subterfuge and there’s a lot of gamesmanship in the draft,” Weltman said. “The objective is obviously that we don’t want to let other teams know where our interest lies and what we’re able to kind of get done and what kids we were able to [meet with]. So that being said, John and I actually were able to meet with Jonathan. We spent a couple hours with him in Miami and got to know him a little bit.”
Isaac confirmed that the meeting occurred.
“They just wanted to get to know me,” Isaac said. “I had no inclination that they would pick me off that meeting. It was super cordial. We just talked about who I was and how I felt I could help the Magic and about my game.”
In reality, there was more to the Magic’s decision to draft Isaac than the interview by Weltman and Hammond in Miami.
The work by Halas and Jones helped, too.