The Orlando Magic's loss turned out to be the Philadelphia 76ers' gain this past offseason when the Sixers hired Jim O'Brien to work as their lead assistant coach.
Magic coach Frank Vogel had offered O'Brien a job as a consultant to the Magic's coaching staff. In that arrangement, O'Brien would've been in Orlando for a large portion of the preseason and for about one week a month during the regular season.
Vogel called O'Brien "my No. 1 mentor in my life professionally and personally" before Vogel's Magic faced O'Brien's Sixers on Monday night at Amway Center.
O'Brien was instrumental in getting Vogel a job as a student-manager at the University of Kentucky in the mid-1990s. And Vogel subsequently worked as an assistant coach on O'Brien's coaching staffs with the Boston Celtics, the 76ers and the Indiana Pacers.
O'Brien would've accepted Vogel's offer to work for the Magic, but the Sixers offered O'Brien their lead assistant coaching position.
"I would have absolutely been with Frank right now if this opportunity with Brett Brown and the 76ers had not come along," O'Brien said. "One of the things that Frank knew was I pretty much did not want to be moving around the country having to set up my life in a different city. That's why he offered me the consulting job: because I could pretty much come and go the way I wanted to come and go.
"The Philadelphia job [worked] because we have homes [in Philadelphia], and it's my hometown city. It was just a perfect opportunity for me to jump back with somebody I really believe in and what they're trying to do here with the Sixers. So when this opportunity came, it kind of trumped the opportunity that Frank put in front of me."
Brown, the Sixers' head coach, said O'Brien has made a positive impact in Philadelphia.
"He's a veteran NBA coach," Brown said. "He's Philly born and bred. He gets the city. He gets the league. He comes in with a wisdom born out of many, many years of experience."
