Happy and healthy, Steve Clifford takes over in Orlando

Steve Clifford knew very quickly that he was going into the family business. His father was a teacher and a high school coach in a tiny town in northern Vermont, and when he was a sophomore on his dad’s team Clifford was telling his parents that he intended to head down that very same career path.

The NBA was not on his radar.

“Never,” Clifford said. “Not at all.”

But he got there, and he’s persevered since. He dealt with a heart scare a few years ago, with debilitating headaches that left him unable to coach for a long stretch of last season, even getting fired by Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Hornets this past offseason after five years and two playoffs berths there. And now he’s got a new chal- lenge, taking over the Orlando Magic and leading a team that has the Eastern Conference’s longest active playoff drought.

Regardless of how much turmoil he’s gone through, Clifford is still counting his blessings — even now, as he inherits a rebuilding project.

“There’s definitely times when you go home, you’re cooking dinner, you go out for dinner, whatever, and say, ‘I don’t know how this happened for me,’” Clifford said. “No, seriously. I don’t want to be corny but in many ways, you’re living your dream. I don’t think coaches in this league take this for granted. It’s a grind, but these are great jobs and this is a great existence.”

So not only is he happy right now, but he’s also healthy.

And he’s making personal adjustments to stay that way.

Clifford missed 21 games last season with headaches — so severe that often he couldn’t even get to sleep without the aid of medicine, and sometimes that wouldn’t even do the trick. Clifford needed a procedure to insert two stents back in the early days of his Charlotte tenure, and even that only kept him out of one game.

The solution to the headaches, he’s found, is about 90 more minutes of sleep a night. At 57 years old, he knows he can’t go-go-go the way he once did.

“Physically, I feel so good,” Clifford said. “This is the best I’ve felt in a long time.”

He’ll have to balance his new approach to ensure he’s available every day to turn things around in Orlando.

Over the last six seasons, no NBA team has won fewer games than the Magic. They haven’t reached the playoffs since 2012 and haven’t won a postseason series since going to the Eastern Conference finals in 2010 — back when Clifford was in his first stint in Orlando, as an assistant coach under Stan Van Gundy.

When Orlando fired Frank Vogel after last season, the perception was that the team was taking a very long time to find its next coach. Turns out, the Magic had their guy in mind all along.

“What really attracted us is the long haul,” Magic president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman said. “His teams, all five years, led the league in defensive rebounding. They committed the fewest turnovers. The bottom line is when you play a Steve Clifford team, you have to beat them. They won’t beat themselves.”

Clifford officially got the Orlando job in May, though might have won it five years ago.