New Orlando Magic coach Sean Sweeney is not one to be bothered by the outcomes of games. The 2026 NBA Finals were different.
As he enters his first season as the new head coach of the Orlando Magic, Sean Sweeney is adopting a role where he will be tasked with elevating the Magic to the next level while discovering his own identity as a head coach.
Luckily for Sweeney, he has had experience getting to the mountain top, but he has never conquered it.
In two of the last three seasons, Sweeney has gone to the NBA Finals as an assistant coach, once with the Dallas Mavericks, and most recently with the San Antonio Spurs. In both instances, his teams lost in five games.
In a recent appearance on Ryen Russillo’s podcast, Sweeney discussed what it felt like for the Spurs to lose to the New York Knicks.
“Absolutely not. I don't lose a lot of sleep over games,” Sweeney said. “I've lost a lot of sleep over that series.
“Yeah, not fun, but thanks for bringing it up,” he added with a chuckle.
Sweeney also detailed what he saw that contributed to San Antonio’s loss.
“I think a few things,” Sweeney said. “One, I think there's a little attrition having to go through the previous series. Two, bad luck. They told me if the games were like 46 minutes or whatever, we would have won 4-1. Jalen [Brunson] obviously had a monster game in that last one. Coached him in Dallas, happy for him, kind of.
“I think there's some of that,” Sweeney added. “And I think we just made more mistakes than we had made in the previous series. And you could maybe say some youth to that, but you don't do what you did and just all of a sudden become young.”
In Sweeney’s view, the media’s presence was also daunting for his team.
“The one thing I think that's a little different in the Finals than the other rounds is when you have to do media in the Finals,” Sweeney said. “You have to answer questions even when you've played poorly or struggled, and you don't have to do that in the previous rounds.
“Those guys all year, if they have a longer media session, it's because they've done something good,” he added. “You don't have 15 minutes of answering, ‘Why didn't you make this play? Are you too young? Are you guys on the same page? What do you think about the coach's decision?’ So, I think that's a different deal and can obviously contribute to it. But then, like you said, Jalen Brunson happened is probably a good answer too.”
