ORLANDO — The Orlando Magic on Thursday held an introductory press conference for new coach Sean Sweeney, adding another piece to the process of his ingratiation with his new team.

Since he was officially named Orlando's 16th head coach in franchise history on June 1, Sweeney has been reaching out to players on the Magic’s roster to begin developing rapport. For Sweeney, the element of communication is important.

"Yeah, there's been a lot of communication with all those guys," he said. "I think there's been a lot of listening, a lot of getting feedback from them on their thoughts on things, themselves, the team, and then trying to communicate things that I value. I think whatever we do, we want to message what our musts are. 

"And so, there's certain things that we want to do as a team to make ourselves successful, but a lot of that has to do, like it's talked about, active attention," Sweeney added. "I want to listen and talk, not just be a talker, because when I do talk, I am a fairly direct communicator at times. So I want to make sure I hear those guys before I talk."

Sweeney comes to Orlando from the San Antonio Spurs, where he served as the associate head coach and played an integral part in getting the Spurs to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2013-14. In San Antonio, Sweeney was in charge of the defense, and he helped elevate it to the third-best ranking in the regular season and the second-best ranking in the playoffs.

Now, Sweeney is not only tasked with getting the Magic’s defense back to its standard after it fell from the second-best rating in the 2024-25 regular season to No. 13 last season, but also elevating a struggling offense. In his view, both sides of the ball are intertwined.

"Well, I think offense works with defense," Sweeney said. "This is a complementary game, and I've had experience along the way in different stops, specifically in Dallas where I've done a lot on the offensive side of the ball, along with coaching in college in that sense. So where it starts offensively is we want to be efficient, and we want to get as many opportunities as we can. We want to activate all five guys.

"We want to be a team that has great spacing, organization, and discipline, so that way we can create advantages, and then when we get those advantages, we want to keep them," he added. "We want to make invisible plays, not only the plays that we all see in the stat sheet, but the ones that we don't see, the things that allow others to be successful. And in general, we want to make sure that we are getting more shots and getting better shots than our opponent.

"And that has to do with the offensive side of the ball certainly, with our spacing, with our discipline, with our offensive rebounding," Sweeney continued. "It also has to do with our defense. And those two things work together. The better we play on offense, the better we defend. The better we defend, the better we play on offense."

Don't miss out on our ROUNDTABLE community and the latest news!

It's completely free to join. Share your thoughts, engage with our Roundtable writers, and chat with fellow members.

Download the free Roundtable APP, and stay even more connected!

For additional coverage, subscribe to our Full Court Magic Podcast!