James Borrego will finish out the season as the Orlando Magic’s interim head coach, and team officials have hired a new lead assistant coach, Igor Kokoskov, to help Borrego the rest of the way.
Magic general manager Rob Hennigan informed Borrego on Tuesday that Borrego will continue to work as the team’s interim head coach for the remaining 26 games of the regular season.
“The approach for me and our staff is going to continue to be the same: to work every day, to get better every day, to help these guys grow every day on the floor and in that locker room,” Borrego told the Orlando Sentinel in a phone interview.
“So nothing changes for us. Our mentality is to get better, to go after every win the rest of the year and to build on what we’ve done to this point and get better from here.”
The Magic have posted a 2-2 record since Borrego became the interim head coach following the firing of Jacque Vaughn on Feb. 5. In those four games, the Magic had just two assistant coaches, Laron Profit and Jay Hernandez, who began this season as the Magic’s assistant coaches for player development.
Kokoskov, 43, worked previously as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Clippers, Detroit Pistons, Phoenix Suns and, most recently, the Cleveland Cavaliers. Kokoskov will be in his 15th season in the NBA; when he was hired by the Clippers in 2000, he became the first full-time, non-American assistant coach in NBA history.
Kokoskov also has worked the last seven summers as the Republic of Georgia’s head coach.
“We know each other through some mutual friends, mutual coaches,” Borrego said. “I’ve respected him from afar. I respected his work in Phoenix and in Detroit. He also adds head-coaching experience, so I think I’ll be able to rely on him to both help me coach this team as a first-time head coach but also help me offensively to really expand what we have here, build on the tools and the skills that we have here offensively.”
The Magic will ramp up a thorough, methodical search for a permanent head coach once the season ends.
When Vaughn was dismissed, it seemed possible the Magic would hire a permanent head coach this season and make the transition during the All-Star break.
In reality, though, there wasn’t any rush to make an immediate hire.
Waiting until after the season or even after the postseason would allow the Magic to cast the widest possible net for a permanent head coach and see which, if any, current head coaches will become available. If the Chicago Bulls part ways with Tom Thibodeau or if the Oklahoma City Thunder let Scott Brooks go, the Magic would have to consider them.
In addition, several assistant coaches could intrigue the Magic, including Alvin Gentry, the Golden State Warriors’ lead assistant coach, who has extensive NBA head-coaching experience.
The Magic could have interest in the former head coaches who already are on the market.
That group includes Scott Skiles, a favorite of Magic fans, the DeVos family and Magic CEO Alex Martins; Michael Malone, a highly respected X’s-and-O’s guru whose stock actually has risen since the Sacramento Kings fired him this season; Mark Jackson, who coached the Warriors for three seasons and set their renaissance in motion; and Vinny Del Negro.
Hennigan has said publicly that Borrego will be a candidate for the permanent job.
Borrego, who at 37 years old is now the NBA’s youngest current head coach, is more focused on the present.
“[The goal] is to continue to build on the principles we’ve laid out in this short period, which is to defend at a very high level, to continue that as our identity moving forward and to build on that, not only be comfortable where we’re at defensively but to build on it every single day until we become an elite defensive team,” Borrego said.
“Secondly, I think we have to find a way to collectively move the ball and use what we have offensively to really put pressure on our opponents more. We’re going to do that with our spacing, with our togetherness and our unselfishness. We’ve seen those traits in our defense over these last four games; now we’ve got to take that unselfishness, that togetherness, that spirit and move it also to the offensive end.”
jrobbins@orlandosentinel.com. Read his blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/magicblog and follow him on Twitter at @JoshuaBRobbins.
