Steve Clifford returns to Orlando Magic as Head Coach

The former Orlando assistant, who was fired by the Hornets last month, Steve Clifford has reached a deal to become the head coach of the Magic, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

Clifford served as an assistant coach with the Magic under Stan Van Gundy from 2007 to 2012. As head coach of the Hornets, he went 196-214 in five seasons. Clifford inherited a Hornets team in 2013 (then the Bobcats) that was coming off a season in which they had the league’s second worst record. In his first season with the team, he guided the Hornets to the playoffs with a 43-39 record. The Hornets regressed the following season, going 33-49, before improving to 48-34 the following season, where they earned the sixth seed and lost in seven games to the Miami Heat in the first round of the playoffs. The Hornets went 36-46 in each of Clifford’s final two seasons with the team.

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.

"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 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.