{"id":15452,"date":"2018-05-30T16:20:25","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T20:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonnba.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=15452"},"modified":"2018-05-30T16:24:58","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T20:24:58","slug":"orlando-magic-steve-clifford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2018\/05\/30\/orlando-magic-steve-clifford\/","title":{"rendered":"Orlando Magic Hire Steve Clifford as New Head Coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to reports, the <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonnba.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/nba-teams\/orlando-magic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Orlando Magic<\/a> have hired <strong>Steve Clifford<\/strong> as the team&#8217;s new head coach. Clifford reportedly agreed to a four-year contract with the team.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Adrian Wojnarowski<\/strong> of ESPN broke the news this morning:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Steve Clifford has agreed to a four-year contract to become the new head coach of the Orlando Magic, league sources tell ESPN. Magic will hold a news conference today to introduce Clifford, who led Charlotte to two playoff appearances.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wojespn\/status\/1001806717036908544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">May 30, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h1><strong>Orlando Magic Hire Steve Clifford as Coach<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>Clifford, 56, spent the last five years as head coach of the <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonnba.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/nba-teams\/charlotte-hornets\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Charlotte Hornets<\/a>. The move is especially bold for a Magic team that hasn&#8217;t maintained a head coach for more than two years since <strong>Stan Van Gundy<\/strong>. However, Orlando&#8217;s president of basketball operations, <strong>Jeff Weltman<\/strong>, is determined to land a coach who will lead the team long-term. After six straight losing seasons, Clifford will have to coach the team out of another rebuild.<\/p>\n<p>Clifford coached Charlotte to a 196-214 record during his tenure as head coach there. He also missed 21 games of his final season due to sleep deprivation and severe migraines. The Hornets made the playoffs twice during his five-year tenure with the team. Clifford&#8217;s primary duties will be to develop the Magic&#8217;s core young players,\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/i\/isaacjo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jonathan Isaac<\/a><\/strong> and<strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/g\/gordoaa01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aaron Gordon<\/a><\/strong>, as the team hopes to continue building.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"DpRtOCmWRxV6baOQ8kRecw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.ca\/detail\/465820681\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'DpRtOCmWRxV6baOQ8kRecw',sig:'nITX97pVq2X216Jy-Tvp_tfXQTTyGCp_TXfEfUq9Bq0=',w:'594px',h:'398px',items:'465820681',caption: true ,tld:'ca',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Orlando Magic have hired Steve Clifford as their new head coach. Clifford was previously head coach of the Charlotte Hornets before being fired after the 2017-18 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2237,"featured_media":15458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2,62,3],"tags":[472,65,821,96,202,136,453],"class_list":["post-15452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magic","category-featured","category-nba","category-news","tag-aaron-gordon","tag-basketball","tag-jonathan-isaac","tag-nba","tag-nba-news","tag-orlando-magic","tag-steve-clifford"],"modified_by":"Lior Kozai (Managing Editor)","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}