METAIRIE – “Aligned” was a key word at the New Orleans Pelicans news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Executive Vice President Joe Dumars cited Jamahl Mosley being “aligned with our vision” as the primary factor that separated Mosley from other candidates to be the team’s new head coach.
And events of the last month aligned in a manner that enabled Dumars to hire Mosley as the franchise’s eighth head coach.
When Dumars went searching for a permanent replacement for Willie Green and a successor to interim head coach James Borrego, Mosley wasn’t even on his radar.
The Pelicans season ended April 12 and while Dumars was scouring the NBA for a new coach, Mosley was coaching the Orlando Magic, who advanced from the play-in tournament as the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference and took a 3-1 lead over the No. 1 seed Detroit Pistons on April 27.
“I thought Jamahl was going to the next round,” Dumars said.
So did virtually everyone else.
Even after the Pistons won Game 5 to stay alive it seemed Orlando was on its way when it took a 24-point second-half lead in Game 6. But then everything changed, Detroit roared back to win 93-79, then took Game 7 and on May 4, Orlando fired Mosley after five seasons as head coach.
Dumars texted Mosley shortly after he learned of the firing to see if he could chat with the coach, who asked for a couple of days to clear his head before they spoke.
Eventually the two did speak a lot and Dumars hired Mosley on May 18 and introduced him Tuesday at the team’s practice facility during a news conference attended by Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson, Saints executive president Mickey Loomis, head coach Kellen Moore, other Saints executives and three of the players that Mosley is inheriting – centers Yves Missi and Derik Queen and forward Micah Peavy.
Mosley, who would have been paid for the two years remaining on his contract with Orlando, said initially he wasn’t sure if he wanted “to jump back in.” But Benson and Dumars won him over because “There was not one part of the conversation that I didn’t feel in my core.”
From a basketball standpoint Mosley’s commitment to defense, physicality and hard work aligned with that which Dumars experienced with the Pistons championship teams during a Hall of Fame playing career and which he instilled in Detroit as general manager and is trying to instill in the Pelicans as he prepares for his second season on the job.
“You can ask about offense all you want,” Mosley said, “but we’re going to do it defensively.”
He added that the Pelicans will be “unapologetically physical” and that players “can’t be afraid of contact, of knocking someone down or getting knocked down.”
The Magic were one of the top defensive teams in the NBA under Mosley, but were generally average offensively. He’ll be expected to bring the offense more in line with the defense as he gets to work under a five-year contract.
Dumars said the first thing he asked Mosley during the courtship was “What the hell happened” in Game 6 when Orlando scored 19 second-half points, missing 23 consecutive shots during one stretch, and made just 1-of-20 field-goal attempts in the fourth quarter.
He went on to grill Mosley about how he handled the team during the collapse: How many timeouts did he call, what was his demeanor and that of the players in the huddles during those timeouts, etc.
Mosley’s answers satisfied Dumars that the coach pushed all the right buttons in trying to manage the situation and properly maintained a calm demeanor so as not to exacerbate what Dumars called “a hot situation” that never cooled.
Dumars said he can tell a lot about a head coach by his substitution pattern. If a coach pulls a player from the game after he misses two or three shots, that sends the wrong message – that scoring is paramount. But when a coach such as Mosley pulls a player who just made a couple of shots in a row because the player missed two or three defensive assignments, that tells the team that they better play defense first if they want to keep playing.
Mosley, 47, has brought his top four assistants from Orlando to New Orleans. Dale Osbourne will be defensive coordinator, Bret Brielmaier will be offensive coordinator, God Shammgod will focus on player development and in-game adjustments and Randy Gregory will be in charge of player development. Mosley said he’ll likely bring in two more assistants to help with player development.
Dumars said Mosley’s success in guiding the maturation of a young team when he arrived in Orlando was attractive because “that’s what we need.”
Mosley described the Pelicans as having a big-time roster with a lot of versatility and a lot of depth. Jeremiah Fears and Queen were recently named to the All-Rookie second team and Peavy also showed promise in his first season.
The core of the team (which finished 26-56) besides the rookies ranges in age from 21 (Missi) to 25 (Zion Williamson, Trey Murphy III and Karlo Matkovic) to 26 (Jordan Poole) to 27 (Herb Jones and Saddiq Bey) to 29 (Dejounte Murray).
Mosley, a native of Milwaukee, took over the Magic in 2021 after a 21-win season. His first team won 22 games, followed by 34 wins. In his third season he was runner-up for Coach of the Year after leading the Magic into the playoffs with a 47-35 record.
Orlando made playoffs again two years ago with a 41-41 record and went 47-35 this season, and overcame a series of injuries to key players the last two seasons. The Magic didn’t advance out of the first round in any of those seasons, losing in seven games two years ago and in four games two years ago before this year’s seven-game loss. His overall record was 189-221.
“Greatness has to be step by step,” Mosley said. “It’s built with consistent habits. You can’t skip a step. Greatness is not achieved by the words you speak but by the work you put in.”
Mosley said he hasn’t had a lot of time to reflect on the abrupt end to his tenure in Orlando, beyond the constant self-reflection that he undergoes.
The whirlwind that took him from Orlando to New Orleans in two weeks fits with one of his core principles about life: “You are exactly where you’re supposed to be.”