Magic Hire Jacque Vaughn As Head Coach

The Orlando Magic have hired Jacque Vaughn as their new head coach.

A team official said the Magic will hold a news conference Monday afternoon to introduce Vaughn, a former NBA point guard who spent the past two seasons as a San Antonio Spurs assistant coach.

Vaughn will take over a team that is expected to trade superstar Dwight Howard, go into rebuilding mode and begin to emphasize developing young players.

Vaughn, 37, is widely viewed within NBA circles as bright, hard-working and organized.

But, at the same time, some league insiders have noted that he brings limited coaching experience.

After retiring as a player in 2009, Vaughn was hired in 2010 by the Spurs as an assistant coach, working under Greg Poppovich.

D’Antoni Interested in Coaching College?

(Mike) D’Antoni, 61, never envisioned himself as a college coach. He can be stubborn and headstrong, and he badly wanted to prove his system could work in the NBA. But in the process of taking his son on college visits, his perspective began to change.

“You think about it,” D’Antoni said. “You look at it and think, ‘Oh, that could be fun.’ One thing I do know from taking my son around is that anytime you step on a college campus, you feel energy. You feel an excitement that’s not there, normally, where the business (of basketball) takes over. And obviously, when you feel the excitement; things go through your head.”

via Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic

Wizards Want Beal to be More Aggressive

(Bradley) Beal scored at least 20 points twice, grabbed at least six rebounds three times and handed out four assists once. His performance was more steady than spectacular. Beal wasn’t too pleased with his shooting from the floor (41.8 percent) or from beyond the three-point line (30 percent), but he also wants to get better.

The most impressive aspect of Beal’s performance was that he never forced the action and let the game to come to him, even if assistant Sam Cassell asked him to be a little more aggressive.

“Honestly, if I feel as though I’m open, coach is going to tell me to shoot it. It’s times I was open and passed and coach got all on my head, so I mean, certain situations, I’m an unselfish player,” Beal said. “I’d rather get somebody else going. I’ll eventually get going myself. That’s just my mentality. But it’s really just staying focused and staying within the flow of the game, actually.”

Roy Returns to the Court in Pro-Am Game

On Saturday, Brandon Roy did something that used to be routine: He played a basketball game. Roy’s performance at the Jamal Crawford Pro-Am League in Seattle was his first public appearance on the court since his last game for the Blazers some 15 months ago. In the interim, Roy has retired due to deteriorating condition of his knees, undergone treatment, started a comeback and agreed to sign with the Minnesota Timberwolves to start the next chapter of his career.

When close friend Will Conroy first hinted and later confirmed on Twitter last week that Roy would play, it created a buzz in the Seattle basketball community, but also some skepticism. Roy pulled out of a pair of charity games at the last minute during the summer of 2011, and he’s yet to officially put pen to paper on his new contract with the Timberwolves. Yet Roy arrived about 20 minutes before gametime and changed into his red jersey. The teams in Crawford’s team are all named after NBA teams, so for one day, Roy–along with Conroy and another former Husky, Mike Jensen–was a member of the Bulls. They squared off against a Kings team featuring Isaiah Thomas and former Blazer Martell Webster.

After scoring the first bucket of the game on a pull-up jumper going to his left, Roy was quiet offensively the rest of the first quarter. This being a pro-am setting that features a gap in talent between NBA stars and local preps that played at the community college level, it was difficult to tell how much Roy was trying to push things. He opened the game using his occasional drives to set up teammates rather than score at the rim.

Is Height as Important as it Used to be?

Most professional organizations have a diversity of opinion on a given issue or philosophy. Many of those inside front offices who have espoused a broader interpretation of what it means to be an NBA power forward, shooting guard or center feel vindicated by the way in which the Miami Heat won the title.

“The NBA is a pick-and-roll game, not a post game, so you need guys who have defined skills regardless of their size,” one scout said. “The league has been that way for a long time, but we ignored it because the Lakers and Celtics were winning, so size seemed like it matter. We told ourselves that you needed to be big and long to win.”

It is not that rebounding and height aren’t valuable commodities. Watching your 6'2'' shooting guard rotate to close on a 6-foot-10 sharpshooter is as painful as ever, but coaches, execs and scouts uniformly maintain that valuing — or devaluing — a player strictly because of his size is an antiquated exercise.

Jeremy Lin Admits Linsanity Affected Him

As he looked back on the craziest year he could imagine, Bay Area native Jeremy Lin conceded to the truth of hindsight. He did let Linsanity go to his head.

“If I’m being honest, in some ways, yes,” Lin told this newspaper. “I fought it every day. But I think subconsciously it had its effect, everyone catering to you. People were saying only good things for so long that when people said negative stuff, it was like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ ”

After Lin signed a three-year, $25 million contract with the Houston Rockets, a lot of negative things were said. He’s selfish. He’s all about the money. His ego is out of control. And, to top it off, many deemed him a basketball fluke who already has maxed out his potential.

Magic Frustrating Trade Partners

Mostly, what seems to be the sticking point in this deal is not an agent or player, but the indecisiveness of the Magic — and their new GM, Rob Hennigan.

According to sources, the Magic have frustrated potential trading partners by continuously changing terms at the last minute. This supposedly dates back to their dealings with the Nets a few weeks back, when Nets GM Billy King felt an agreement that would send (Dwight) Howard to Brooklyn had been finalized, sources said.

Instead, the Nets re-signed their own free-agent center, Brook Lopez, eliminating themselves from landing Howard.