On the night of the College Football Playoff National Championship, the Orlando Magic went into Chicago and handed the Bulls a 121-114 defeat. Two days after that, the Magic beat the Houston Rockets 120-113 at home, raising hopes that a new, wide-open style of offense might help Orlando take the next step in its development.
Three weeks later, it's clear that rather than the Magic turning the corner, those games represented the beginning of the end. Orlando couldn't keep up its prodigious offensive output, and the faster pace translated into easy buckets for opponents at the other end. The Magic have lost 10 in a row since beating Houston, and on Thursday, it cost coach Jacque Vaughn his job after two-plus years at the helm.
Slow progress in the Magic kingdom
Vaughn was hired as coach on July 28, 2012, two weeks before Orlando traded Dwight Howard to the Los Angeles Lakers and embarked on a rebuilding process. Nearly three years later, the Magic remain mired among the league's rebuilding teams. Because they tore down a year earlier than fellow lottery squads such as the Philadelphia 76ers and Utah Jazz, they had the league's worst record during Vaughn's tenure at 58-158 (.269), six fewer wins than the Sixers during the same span and 15 fewer than any other team in the league.
Ultimately, it's hard for any coach to survive that amount of losing, but that doesn't necessarily mean Vaughn is to blame. On an individual level, he has done a credible job of developing the young talent accumulated by general manager Rob Hennigan.
