Over the six seasons since they traded Dwight Howard, the Orlando Magic have had the league’s second worst record. And by the time this season ends, *they may very well have the worst record over that stretch.
* Through Saturday’s games, Orlando is 153-327 since the 2012 four-team, Howard trade, while the Philadelphia 76ers (who were also involved in the deal) are 147-331. The team with the third worst record over that stretch – the Los Angeles Lakers – was the team that acquired Howard in the same trade.
It has been a failed rebuild, with few games won and minimal young talent developed. And the latest victim may be Magic coach Frank Vogel, who is 50-102 in his two years in Orlando, having overseen teams that have ranked 24th or worse in both offensive and defensive efficiency in both seasons.
The Orlando Sentinel‘s Josh Robbins takes a deep dive into the situation Vogel is in with a bad team, new management, and one more guaranteed year on his contract:
And now Vogel finds himself in a predicament coaches dread: on the hot seat, unsure if his team’s front office will retain him for next season. Vogel is in a precarious spot. Between Vogel’s first and second seasons, the Magic fired Rob Hennigan as the team’s general manager, dismissed many other key figures within the basketball operations department and hired Jeff Weltman as the president of basketball operations and John Hammond as the general manager.
Weltman and Vogel would not comment for this article.
As they have remained quiet, gossip has swirled for months within NBA circles about Vogel’s future. The speculation accelerated after the Magic followed a superb 8-4 start with an injury-fueled nine-game losing streak. The conjecture has always centered around an assumption that Weltman will want to pick his own coach rather than retain the coach he inherited. Then, with a new coach in place, Weltman ostensibly would undertake an incremental rebuild and reboot the failed effort that began under Hennigan.
Weltman entered the first year of his Magic tenure with a clearly stated goal: He and Hammond wanted to spend the year evaluating the Magic’s entire basketball operation. That process extends beyond the players on the roster. It also includes Vogel and his coaching staff.
