ORLANDO, Fla. _ The Orlando Magic fired coach Frank Vogel on Thursday morning, a move that continues a trend of severe instability at the team's head-coaching position.
Vogel compiled a 54-110 record during his two seasons as the Magic's coach, including a 25-57 record during the team's injury-ravaged 2017-18 season.
The Magic announced Vogel's dismissal at 8:47 a.m., a few minutes after Magic President of Basketball Operations Jeff Weltman met with Vogel inside the team's Amway Center offices.
"We would like to thank Frank for his contributions to the Orlando Magic," Weltman said in a statement. "We appreciate the sacrifices he made as head coach and certainly wish him and his family well going forward."
In addition to firing Vogel, the Magic also dismissed lead assistant coach Chad Forcier and assistant coaches Corliss Williamson and Jay Hernandez on Thursday morning.
"It's tough because you never want to see somebody get fired or somebody get cut or traded," point guard D.J. Augustin said. "It's a business. I've been with Frank for a while. I had him in Indiana. I had him here for two years. My wife is friends with his wife. So it sucks. But at the end of the day, we all know that this is a business ... and anything can happen."
Buoyed by far above-average shooting, the Magic opened their 2017-18 season with an 8-4 record. But the team struggled once its schedule toughened and it faced a staggering array of injuries to key players. From Nov. 11 through Jan. 12, Orlando posted a 4-27 record, and its playoff hopes evaporated.
Vogel and his supporters can make a case that the roster he inherited upon his arrival in 2016 wasn't good enough to contend for a playoff spot. Also, few substantial changes were made following the 2016-17 season. Making matters worse, during the 2017-18 season, Magic players combined to miss a total of 227 games due to injuries or illnesses.
"I feel bad for Frank," center Nikola Vucevic said. "He's a great guy. Like I said a couple of days earlier ... I think with the situation that he had here _ last year with a new team and everything _ it was tough; it didn't work out on the court for us. And then this year, too, our season didn't go the way we wanted it to. It's a tough business. I feel bad for him, but I think that he did everything that he could have (done) to help us be the best team we can (be). But it's the way the business goes sometimes. It sucks."
The Magic hired Weltman and a new general manager, John Hammond, last May. Weltman and Hammond decided they would spend their first year on the job evaluating every aspect of the Magic's basketball-operations department, including the coaching staff.
The Magic have had a revolving door at the head-coaching spot for several years. The franchise churned through four coaches over the last four full seasons: Jacque Vaughn, interim coach James Borrego, Scott Skiles and Vogel.
And now, the Magic almost certainly will face significant competition from other teams as Orlando attempts to fill its head-coaching job. Other teams are expected to make coaching changes, too. The New York Knicks, for example, fired Jeff Hornacek following the Knicks' season finale.
Weltman and Hammond kept mum about their plans for Vogel and, therefore, have not publicly discussed their plans for the hiring process or possible candidates to fill the job.
Weltman spent four seasons as a Toronto Raptors executive, and most of the speculation about potential successors to Vogel has centered around people Weltman worked with in Toronto, including Raptors assistant coach Nick Nurse and the Raptors' G-League coach, Jerry Stackhouse.
Nurse and Stackhouse indeed could become candidates for Orlando's coaching job. Nurse is well-regarded in the industry. Stackhouse coaches the Raptors' G-League team, and that squad won the league title last season and once again has advanced to the G-League finals this season.
Other possibilities could include former New Orleans Hornets coach and former Magic player Monty Williams, who is well-liked by the Magic's owners, the DeVos family; former Memphis Grizzlies coach David Fizdale; and current Charlotte Hornets coach and former Magic assistant coach Steve Clifford if the Hornets make a coaching change.
Weltman and Hammond also could consider several others with former ties to the Magic, including Borrego (who is now a San Antonio Spurs assistant coach) and Utah Jazz assistant coach Igor Kokoskov (who served as a Magic assistant coach during Borrego's tenure as interim coach).
"Especially because we have a younger group than most teams," said forward and free agent-to-be Mario Hezonja, "I think we need a guy that is going to really ask us to be on our top of our stuff on the court and off the court have the authority with us and not care about our players' feelings _ just be really strict with us. So whoever that is, I don't know yet."
The 2018-19 season remained on Vogel's contract. The Magic also held an unexercised team option on Vogel for the 2019-20 season.
"He was great with the players, man," swingman Terrence Ross said. "We all felt comfortable with him. We could all talk to him. He was easygoing. He really wanted to win, and he knew the right things to say to motivate us. At times, we went out there as a team and it was a little tough. You could see that we had a lot of players out. It was a little tough on him. You could see it. But sometimes that's just the dice you get dealt, the cards you get dealt."
Vogel, 44, spent six seasons as the Indiana Pacers' head coach, compiling a 250-181 regular-season record and a 31-30 postseason record as his Pacers teams twice reached the Eastern Conference finals.
His Pacers teams had an identity: They were a tough, physical, defensive-minded group.
The Pacers also had better players, including All-Star Paul George and veteran power forward David West, who was one of the team's leaders.
Vogel's Magic teams never cemented a consistent identity.
In Vogel's first year with the team, the Magic attempted to play two of its three big men _ Bismack Biyombo, Serge Ibaka and Vucevic _ simultaneously, and the experiment proved disastrous. Biyombo vastly underperformed his four-year, $68 million contract, and Ibaka was not happy in Orlando and never jelled with his new teammates. But perhaps things would've improved if Vogel played Ibaka at center and moved Aaron Gordon to power forward.
Vogel eventually moved to a more versatile lineup when the team traded Ibaka in February 2017. Vogel moved Gordon back to power forward, Evan Fournier to small forward and installed Ross as the shooting guard.
Biyombo said Vogel excelled at "finding a way to keep the locker room together, which is the hardest thing to do in the league."
"You have different personnel (and) you have people with different agendas," Biyombo said. "How do you rally everybody together? How do you help everybody stand together? I think that's what he really did well for us."
The new style paid dividends early during the 2017-18 season, but the team started to falter in mid-November.
"I think Frank did well in terms of his positivity and his relentlessness," said forward Jonathan Isaac, who just completed his rookie season. "There was a lot of times where he saw us give up, he saw us not play to the best of our ability. And he wasn't having it."
