ORLANDO, Fla. — The Orlando Magic haven’t won a playoff series in 16 years.

Think about that for a second.

Sixteen years.

That’s an entire generation of Magic fans who have grown up hearing stories about Dwight Howard, Stan Van Gundy and the franchise’s glory days without ever truly experiencing any joy themselves.

And yet, despite all of the frustration, disappointment and first-round exits, the Magic can now at least claim one significant victory this postseason:

It appears they won the coaching carousel.

By reportedly finalizing a deal to hire San Antonio Spurs associate head coach Sean Sweeney as their new head coach, the Magic landed the hot candidate everybody else seemed to want. The Dallas Mavericks would have hired him. The Chicago Bulls wanted him. Several other organizations have been interested in him over the last few years. But when the dust settled, Sweeney chose Orlando.

That matters.

A lot.

In an NBA where coaches spend countless hours evaluating organizational stability, roster potential and championship trajectories, Sweeney had options. He could have waited. He could have pursued other openings. Instead, he looked at Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, Desmond Bane, Jalen Suggs and the rest of Orlando’s young core and decided this was the opportunity worth taking.

That should tell Magic fans something.

It tells them that people around the league see what many in Orlando have been touting for years: a roster with legitimate championship potential.

Full disclosure: Personally, I would have loved to see the Magic hire Billy Donovan. Not necessarily because Donovan was the best basketball fit, but because he would have been the best basketball story. The idea of Donovan returning to Florida and finally taking the NBA job he famously walked away from nearly two decades ago would have been fascinating. Jeff Van Gundy would have been a compelling storyline as well.

But there’s a reason team presidents hire coaches and sportswriters write columns.

Donovan and Van Gundy might have generated bigger headlines. Sean Sweeney might be the better hire.

In fact, he is the most important hire Jeff Weltman has made since becoming the president of basketball operations. Why? Because if Sweeney fails, he will be the last hire Weltman makes as the Magic’s president of basketball operations.

At 41 years old, Sweeney represents the modern NBA coaching prototype. He combines advanced tactical thinking with an old-school intensity that traces directly back to Gregg Popovich’s extended coaching tree. He embraces modern schemes and analytics, but he also believes in accountability, competitiveness and challenging players every single day.

That combination is becoming increasingly rare.

As Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson recently explained to the San Antonio Express-News, one of the things that immediately stood out about Sweeney was his ability to balance innovation with toughness.

“I just took a liking to his ability to articulate his basketball philosophy and what he thought about the game and NBA coaching in general, in terms of competitiveness and how hard you should coach and holding guys accountable,” Johnson said. “But also the modern, creative part and thinking outside the box.”

If any of that sounds familiar, it should.

After Orlando’s stunning first-round collapse against Detroit, star player Paolo Banchero essentially challenged the organization to create a culture where failure wasn’t tolerated.

“You create an environment where losing isn’t acceptable,” Banchero said after the Game 7 defeat.

That comment felt less like an observation and more like a warning.

The Magic responded by hiring a coach whose entire reputation is built on creating exactly that kind of environment.

Sweeney’s calling card is defense, and the results everywhere he has coached are impossible to ignore. This season, he oversaw San Antonio’s defense under Coach of the Year finalist Mitch Johnson and helped engineer one of the most dramatic defensive turnarounds in recent NBA history.

A year after ranking 25th in defensive efficiency, the Spurs finished third.

A year after being one of the league’s worst defensive teams, they became one of its best.

When asked recently by the News-Express how much credit Sweeney deserved for San Antonio’s defensive transformation, Defensive Player of the Year Victor Wembanyama’s answer was simple:

“All of it,” Wemby said.

That’s not praise from a role player. That’s praise from the new face of the NBA.

At some point, these defensive turnarounds stop being coincidence and become a pattern.

In Milwaukee, Sweeney helped transform a Bucks team that ranked dead last in defensive rating into the fourth-best defense in the league in a single season. In Dallas, he coordinated defenses that helped power multiple deep playoff runs, including the Mavericks’ trip to the NBA Finals in 2024.

Everywhere he goes, defensive excellence follows.

That’s significant because Orlando already has a defensive identity. The Magic ranked among the league’s best defensive teams under Jamahl Mosley. Sweeney’s challenge won’t be building a defense from scratch. His challenge will be taking an already elite defense and helping unlock the offensive potential that has repeatedly disappeared in the postseason.

The encouraging part is that Sweeney’s resume extends far beyond X’s and O’s.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of his coaching journey is the list of superstar players who swear by him.

He not only has coached Victor Wembanyama.

He’s coached Giannis Antetokounmpo.

He’s coached Luka Doncic.

And those players don’t merely respect him. They genuinely seem to love him.

Luka was such a believer in Sweeney that he lobbied to have him join Slovenia’s national team coaching staff after Dallas reached the NBA Finals.

When Sweeney’s name was recently mentioned to Antetokounmpo by a reporter from The Athletic, Giannis immediately lit up.

“Sweeney?!” Antetokounmpo exclaimed with his signature smile splashed across his face. “I love that dude. My relationship with Sweeney, it’s more than basketball. He’s one of my best friends.”

Then Giannis revealed something even more telling.

“The killer mentality – he definitely helped me with that,” Antetokounmpo said. “It definitely comes from me and my family and the way I grew up, but having Coach Sweeney for those years, he really helped me as a player and as a person off the court.”

Think about that for a moment.

One of the most dominant players of his generation credits Sean Sweeney with helping shape his mindset and mentality.

That speaks to something every successful coach eventually has to master. It’s not enough to draw up plays or install schemes. The best coaches build relationships, earn trust and find ways to push players beyond what they believe they’re capable of becoming.

Sweeney appears to have that gift.

And while nobody is suggesting Giannis is suddenly headed to Orlando, it certainly doesn’t hurt that one of the biggest stars in basketball speaks about Sweeney like a trusted mentor and close confidante. If the Magic ever find themselves participating in the Giannis sweepstakes, they’ll at least have one relationship already established.

More importantly, they now have a coach who understands how to develop elite talent.

That may ultimately be the biggest reason this hire feels so important.

The Magic aren’t searching for an identity anymore. They already have one. They have size. They have versatility. They have two jumbo-sized playmakers in Banchero and Wagner. They have one of the best young defensive cores in basketball.

What they need now is somebody capable of pushing them from promising to prolific.

Somebody willing to challenge them.

Somebody capable of demanding more.

Somebody who understands that after three consecutive first-round exits, simply making the playoffs is no longer enough.

Here’s hoping Sean Sweeney is exactly that coach.

The Orlando Magic still haven’t won a playoff series in 16 years.

But for the first time in a long time, it feels like they just won something else.

They won the race for the coach everybody seemed to want.

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