ORLANDO — By hiring Sean Sweeney to be their next head coach, the Orlando Magic are once again banking on someone who has never held the role before, but that does not mean Sweeney does not contain vital experience.

Sweeney has held a number of roles as an assistant over 15 years in the NBA. Most recently, he served as the associate head coach of the San Antonio Spurs under Mitch Johnson. Before that, he was an assistant on Jason Kidd’s staff with the Dallas Mavericks.

As a result, Sweeney has coached in the NBA Finals in two of the last three seasons with both the Spurs and the Mavericks, and he had a large part in coaching and developing young stars such as Luka Doncic and Victor Wembanyama during those runs. Those experiences provided learning lessons, which he is ready to bring with him to Orlando.

"Yeah, a number of lessons," Sweeney said at his introductory press conference on Thursday. "Number one, fundamentals are your foundation. If you have great fundamentals, it allows you to build upon them and add layers to it, and that's what's going to carry you when it matters most. Secondly, your habits. You need great daily habits.

"We want to concentrate on our daily habits and our daily process to make sure that we continue to improve throughout the course of the season," he added. "And it's not going to be necessarily just an upward trajectory the whole time. There's going to be ups and downs, but we want to have great habits.

"And then the third thing is that pressure is earned," Sweeney continued. "You don't get that pressure unless you've earned it. And the teams that I've been with that have gotten there earn that right to be there playing when nobody else is playing. So, those are the main things, but there are so many lessons along the way that you get when you play into June and nobody else is playing."

Sweeney is inheriting a Magic team that is young with a lot of potential. A core of Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, Desmond Bane and Jalen Suggs are either not yet in their prime or have just entered it, and they understand what it takes to make it to the playoffs, but this iteration of the team has not yet won a series in the postseason.

To Sweeney, the drive of Orlando’s roster stands out, which is exciting for him.

"Well, what stands out to me, anytime we played Orlando, they were always a hard-playing team," Sweeney said. Competitive, tough, and so, that's something there. There's obviously talent here, a number of talented guys that I'm excited to coach. 

"And then just in the conversations that I've had with a number of the players, guys are hungry," he added. "They're ready to win. They want to keep working on building on what they've done. And so. this is an exciting thing with all those things in combination and what I've seen from these guys already."

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