ORLANDO, Fla. _ Steve Clifford engineered a major turnaround once before.
Now the Orlando Magic hope he will do the same for them.
The Magic have reached a deal with Clifford for Clifford to become the team's new coach, team officials said.
Clifford met with the team's owners, the DeVos family, on Tuesday in Michigan _ one of the final steps in a lengthy search process that started when the Magic fired Frank Vogel last month after the team missed the playoffs for the sixth straight year.
Magic President of Basketball Operations Jeff Weltman and GM John Hammond first interviewed Clifford on May 16 in Chicago and then had a second interview with Clifford on May 24, the league source said.
In 2013, Clifford became Charlotte's coach after the team posted the NBA's second-worst record.
Fueled by a dramatically improved defense, Charlotte went 43-39 during Clifford's first season _ a 22-win improvement _ and ended a three-year playoff drought.
The Hornets fired Clifford last month. In his five seasons as coach, the team compiled a 196-214 regular-season record and reached the playoffs twice.
"Your culture are your people, and then your job (as the coach) is to maximize that: to try to impact each guy in a way that you can get them to adapt or change in that way," Clifford said before the Hornets played the Magic in mid-February. "In our five years, I've been proud of that."
Clifford, 56, knows Orlando well. From 2007-2012, he worked as an assistant coach under Stan Van Gundy and primarily worked with the team's forwards, a group that included Ryan Anderson, Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu.
Clifford will become the Magic's fifth coach since the start of the 2014-15 season, joining predecessors Jacque Vaughn, James Borrego (who was an interim coach), Scott Skiles and Vogel. Vogel coached the team during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons and compiled a 54-110 record over those two years.
Vogel was fired on April 12.
The ensuing coaching search confounded many NBA executives and industry insiders because Weltman kept the process hush-hush. The identities of only five interviewees became public: Clifford, former Memphis Grizzlies coach David Fizdale, University of Houston coach Kelvin Sampson, San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Ime Udoka and Portland Trail Blazers assistant coach David Vanterpool. The New York Knicks hired Fizdale shortly after he interviewed with the Magic.
Even before Vogel was fired, the Magic were rumored to have significant interest in Toronto Raptors G-League coach Jerry Stackhouse. The rumors seemed to make logical sense. Weltman, after all, had worked within the Raptors' front office prior to his arrival in Orlando, and Stackhouse generally is regarded as an up-and-coming coach. But the Magic never interviewed Stackhouse, sources told the Sentinel.
A strong communicator, Clifford is known primarily as a defensive-minded coach. His Charlotte teams finished in the top 10 in defensive efficiency _ points allowed per possession _ in three of his five seasons and never finished worse than 16th, according to the NBA's data.
His teams' offenses tended to be underrated. The Hornets ended the 2015-16 season ninth in the league in offensive efficiency, were 14th in 2016-17 and 13th in 2017-18.
Still, Charlotte's 2017-18 season was a disappointment.
The Hornets went 36-46 and missed the playoffs even though All-Star point guard Kemba Walker was healthy for the entire year. Dwight Howard, who was acquired in an offseason trade last summer, never fully jelled with his teammates.
"To me, in my five years, I thought that this was potentially our best team, frankly," Clifford said on April 6, before the Hornets played the Magic in Orlando. "What we haven't done is the number one thing that you have to do to be a good NBA team: We haven't established a team game. We haven't established a way to play that's consistent every night. I thought we could be a top-five defensive team. Instead, this has been our worst defensive team, and it's really ended there."
Clifford also experienced a frightening health scare. Suffering from crippling headaches brought on by a persistent lack of sleep, he took a leave of absence from early December through mid-January and missed 21 games.
"It was not life-changing, but it's impacted me a great deal," Clifford said before the Hornets-Magic game in mid-February. "I said, 'I know I have to do my job differently.' And the neurologist's line was, 'No, you have to live differently.'"
Clifford has said he has recovered fully and has made strides regaining a consistent sleep pattern.
In Orlando, Clifford will inherit a team that went 25-57 this past season.
Aaron Gordon, Jonathan Isaac, Evan Fournier and Nikola Vucevic comprise the team's nucleus, but that nucleus features a multitude of questions.
The trio of Gordon, Fournier and Vucevic has never won consistently together. Vucevic often struggles on the defensive end. Gordon has shown some promise, but he will become a restricted free agent in July. And Isaac, the sixth pick in the 2017 draft, only played in 27 games as a rookie due to an assortment of injuries.
One of Clifford's most critical tasks will be to develop the team's young players, including Gordon (assuming the Magic retain Gordon in free agency), Isaac and the team's first-round pick in this year's draft.
In Charlotte, Clifford helped Walker improve.
And now, Magic officials hope Clifford will elevate their players, too.
