Magic President: There’s no reason to break up the team after a loss

Orlando Magic President Jeff Weltman says it’s time to make a head coaching change and fire Jamahl Mosley, but he doesn’t want to “break” the roster based on how the season ended in a first-round loss to Detroit.

A day after blowing a 3-1 series lead with a 24-point third-quarter lead in Game 6 to fall in seven games to the top-seeded Pistons, Weltman fired Mosley after five seasons as head coach.

However, Weltman said on Monday that after recovering, Dr Franz WagnerThe Magic showed what they could do when the whole. Wagner suffered a strained right calf in Game 4 and the Magic have dropped three straight without their star forward.

“It was a gut punch,” Weltman said of the Magic’s first-round loss, especially their Game 6 second-half collapse. “It’s going to be with our team this summer. We know a lot of our season will be filtered through that lens. What happened? I can point to a lot of things. I think we were up 3-1 against the number one team in the East and Franz got hurt. It changed the series.

“… When healthy, we’ve been top five (on) defense and top 10 (on) offense … I think we saw some of what we expected to see (against Detroit). So I don’t want to tear this thing down because it’s over and definitely a half.”

Mosley, 47, was hired to help rebuild the Magic and develop its young prospects. He led Orlando to the playoffs the last three seasons but failed to get out of the first round in each of those trips.

“It seems like it’s time for a new approach,” Weltman said. “Maybe for all of us to have a new voice and a different vantage point of what’s going on with our team.”

The Magic moved their chips last offseason when they traded four unprotected first-round picks, a first-round pick, Kentavis Caldwell-Pope And for Cole Anthony Desmond Benn. The move was expected to push the Magic into Eastern contention but what followed was an inconsistent season with some disappointing lows while dealing with injuries, mainly to Wagner.

Wagner was limited to just 34 games this regular season by injury, and the Magic finished with 45 wins and fought their way into the playoffs as the eighth seed through the play-in tournament.

“It’s very disappointing,” Weltman said of the injury. “But it’s very encouraging because whenever they’ve been together, they’ve been elite. I think there’s a lot of different ways to build a team. We’re built on physicality, versatility, good defensive personnel and guys who can ultimately elevate their games in the playoffs. I think what we hoped for in the playoffs happened tough. But came out tough.”

Weltman, who signed a contract extension just before Orlando’s trip to the NBA Cup Final Four, said the front office will be open about what kind of head coach they look for and how experienced the next coach needs to be.

“I don’t think we look for a specific trait or quality,” Weltman said. “Coaches come in so many different shapes and sizes. Someone that can look at our team that can help us move forward and understand where we are in our timeline, try to go through the growth stages of the rebuild… I don’t have a box to say that we want the next coach to come out of this box.”

Weltman has made it clear that he believes this Magic core can reach its lofty goals as a build. The first-round loss to the Pistons showed what Orlando can do when healthy, though it left a bitter taste that will linger throughout the offseason.

“Had we stayed healthy, I want to imagine where we could have gone in this series and beyond,” Weltman said. “I think when you build a team for the playoffs, you try to build a roster that has our attributes. It’s not easy to have positional versatility, people who can elevate their games when it matters most. The physicality, a lot of the way we’re built is designed to be successful in the playoffs.

“Unfortunately we haven’t seen a lot of it. But when healthy, we’ve seen it pretty well. I don’t see any reason why if we can compete against the No. 1 team why we can’t compete against anyone else in the East.”