Report: Magic GM likely to be fired, Doc Rivers a potential replacement
A front-office shakeup could reportedly be in store for a pair of teams on opposite coasts.
After a year of mystifying moves that has the team headed for a fifth straight lottery appearance, with fewer assets than they had 12 months ago, Orlando Magic general manager Rob Hennigan is "increasingly likely to be dismissed at season's end," sources have told ESPN's Marc Stein.
Meanwhile, there's been "persistent chatter" around the league about the Magic's desire to bring Los Angeles Clippers president and head coach Doc Rivers back into the organization at some point "down the road," Stein reports.
It would take a lot for the Magic to pry Rivers from his current situation in Los Angeles, where he has autonomy over personnel decisions, a massively superior team to coach, and a mammoth contract that runs through the 2018-19 season. But the Clippers could be headed toward a summer of seismic change, given that they'll once again be hard-pressed to advance past the second round of the playoffs, and that Chris Paul and Blake Griffin will both be unrestricted free agents at season's end.
It's unclear whether a reunion with the Magic - who Rivers coached from 1999 to 2003, winning Coach of the Year in his first season on the sideline - would involve supplanting both Hennigan and head coach Frank Vogel, or whether the team would simply want him to take over their basketball operations department. There's no indication that Vogel's job is in jeopardy, and the Magic also have Detroit Pistons associate GM Pat Garrity on their radar, according to Stein.
Rivers has compiled a 206-109 record as the Clippers' president and coach, but despite the team's ultra-promising core, has so far failed to guide them to the first conference finals berth in franchise history.
The past year of Hennigan's ignominious tenure has seen him try to short-circuit Orlando's rebuilding process, effectively turning Tobias Harris, Victor Oladipo, and Domantas Sabonis into Terrence Ross and a late first-round draft pick, while overpaying Bismack Biyombo and Jeff Green to overstuff the team's frontcourt. The Magic could use some new leadership.