METAIRIE, La. (AP) — Jamahl Mosley sat comfortably at the end of a conference table at New Orleans Pelicans headquarters on Tuesday and suggested that his recent downfall in Orlando stemmed in no small part from how he handled success.
Mosley proved in five years with the Magic that he can take a collection of young players in a relatively small market and mold them into a playoff team. As New Orleans' new coach, he'll be expected to do that — and more.
“As the team rises and expectations rise, that communication level needs to rise with it. And that accountability has to rise," the 47-year-old Mosley said shortly after his introduction at team headquarters. "When you grow, you have to be willing to have the harder conversations as you get better and better and be OK with it.”
While Orlando made the playoffs in each of the past three seasons, it never won a series. This season, the Magic not only lost a 3-1, first-round playoff series lead to Detroit, but could not hold a 24-point, second-half lead at home in Game 6.
Joe Dumars, now entering his second year as Pelicans Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations, said he needed to discuss that collapse with Mosley.
“That’s the first thing we talked about," recounted Dumars, a former NBA champion as a player and executive with Detroit. "I was like, ‘What the hell happened, man?’”
Dumars said they spoke about Mosley's message, his usage of timeouts, the tone with which he spoke to the players and “everything that you would want to know.”
Dumars concluded that Mosley handled it all professionally, and that it was just a bad day for a promising coach.
Orlando's decision to fire Mosley after five years was “more the norm” in the NBA “than an outlier,” Dumars said.
“It’s just a natural course of the NBA," he said, citing as an example New York Knicks coach Mike Brown, who has been a head coach with five franchises — twice with Cleveland.
“Five years, if you’re like, ‘We need to take another step,’ I get it,” Dumars said of the Magic firing Mosley. "People move on — and you pick up coaches.”
More important factors, Dumars said, were the similarities he saw among his own and Mosley's vision for the franchise. They both said they want to see the Pelicans play elite defense, be physical, exhibit an unsurpassed work ethic and be accountable to one another.
“When you go through these searches, really what you’re trying to do is find alignment, more than anything else," said Dumars, whose candidates also included Darvin Ham, Rajon Rondo, Steve Hetzel and ex-interim coach James Borrego.
Mosley already has brought in several members of his Orlando staff, including Bret Brielmaier, Dale Osbourne and God Shammgod. They attended Mosley's introduction before an audience that included Gayle Benson, the owner of the Pelicans and NFL's New Orleans Saints.
Employees of both franchises attended, including Saints general manager Mickey Loomis and coach Kellen Moore, a self-described basketball fan. They stood together behind several rows of white chairs set up on a practice court.
Mosley said he brought former staffers to New Orleans in part because they are comfortable criticizing him and also have seen him at his best.
“They’re constantly telling me the truth about myself,” Mosley said. “When you can have people tell you the truth about things you need to improve or things that you do great, you can really evaluate it the right way.”
While Mosley and Dumars were vague about potential offseason roster changes, both said they expect star power forward Zion Williamson, who averaged 21 points in 62 games last season, to remain a centerpiece.
“He hasn’t even scratched the surface of things he can do,” Mosley said of Williamson, while also noting that “some of the things he’s done here have been obviously spectacular."
Dumars, meanwhile, said he would “love to see Jamahl coach Zion. I’d like to see him get Zion to defend and do all the things they said. And let’s see what we have here.”
Soon after Mosley was fired by the Magic, he said colleagues tried to cheer him up with texts such as: “You’re now an official NBA coach. You’ve been fired.”
Now that he's been rehired in less than a month, he appreciates those sentiments even more.
“It sucked in the moment. You don’t understand it. But at the end of the day, like, you are exactly where you’re suppose to be in life," Mosley said. "You don’t make excuses about it. ... You figure out what you need to do in that moment and then keep moving.”
___
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
