Magic boot Vaughn — now what?
Team needs coach who won’t lose games, fans
Jacque Vaughn has left the building.
A franchise stuck in the mud has not.
The Orlando Magic fired their head coach on Thursday, a passive-aggressive kind of thing since team officials had acknowledged privately that Vaughn was dead man walking a week ago.
It is the cold and calculating business of professional sports. Just ask Stan Van Gundy to show you his scars.
Vaughn succeeded Van Gundy after the Dwightmare drama of 2012. Keeping Stan after ditching disgruntled superstar Dwight Howard
would have made no sense. Stan doesn’t do baby-sitting.
That was Vaughn’s job. He was brought in to be patient and lose a lot of games, and he did that very well.
But ultimately, the business model flipped. Vaughn proved to be an adept baby-sitter, but as a coach, not so much.
He had to go, before everyone else started leaving the Amway Center. The empty seats, the apathy and the Twitter firebombs from disgruntled fans sent a message to the higher-ups:
Do something. We are tired of a team spinning in circles. This is insulting.
The Magic are bleeding, heavily. And dumping Vaughn is the Band-Aid approach.
Now comes the challenging part.
As Magic general manager Rob Hennigan is fond of saying, this is a “process,” one that becomes increasingly challenging in the months to come.
Both Hennigan and Magic CEO Alex Martins admitted Thursday that one of the reasons Vaughn is out of a job is that the team hasn’t shown measurable progress. The Magic have the same record — 15-37 — as they did a year ago. And Vaughn’s .269 winning percentage is the second-lowest in NBA history for a coach with at least 200 regularseason games. Newly named interim head coach James Borrego, left, listens as Magic GM Rob Hennigan announces the firing of Orlando Magic head coach Jacque Vaughn at the Amway Center on Thursday.
“We’re in this to win, not in this for continual losing,” Martins said. “We suffer with every loss as much as every fan out there.”
This isn’t spin city. Martins — who has been around in different capacities for most of the team’s history — is invested in this team.
He stews just like Jim and Joan in Section 245. But only Martins and Hennigan have the disposable income to fix the problem. Martins told me that won’t be an issue. The team will have $20 million to $30 million in salary-cap space to chase a superstar through free agency. We aren’t talking about Channing Frye and Willie Green.
There will also be money from owner Rich DeVos’ coffers to go after a veteran coach.
Interim coach James Borrego is a nice guy and has potential, but no one is looking at him beyond a stopgap to close out the last 30 games of the season.
The Magic need to go big or go home next season.
It is difficult to ask people to care when the franchise business model has been etched in failure in recent years. The team has lost 10 consecutive games and has allowed 100 points or more in 77 losses during the past three years.
Where is the heart, and where is the hustle? Things are all gray and mucked up and fuzzy now.
Hennigan says the Magic have hit a bit of a “speed bump,” although at times it feels like a head-on collision.
This is the pain that comes with losing so badly. Vaughn may have lost the locker room, as they say in this business when a coach can’t connect with his players.
Martins and Hennigan can’t afford to lose Central Florida.
“Apathy” is the worst word in the world for a sports franchise. Indifference is toxic. It spills over from the folks in the cheap seats to the corporate suites and courtside seats.
Magic fans will likely praise the decision to dump Vaughn and then put the people in the jerseys and the suits on notice.
Dwight, Stan and Jacque are history. They’ve all left the building.
Hennigan and Martins have to make sure the paying customers don’t.