Magic Head Coach Offers Verdict on Potential Offseason Changes in Orlando
Orlando's final game of the season highlighted the offensive struggles the Magic had throughout the season.
Boston Celtics Orlando Magic playoff series© Mike Watters-Imagn Images
Although the season was marked by injuries to key players like Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner and Jalen Suggs, the team struggled to establish consistent offensive rhythm.
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Despite making the playoffs, Orlando ranked among the bottom four teams in the league in points per game, three-pointers made, field goal percentage and field goal attempts.
Head Coach Jamahl Mosley addresses possible roster changes
The Orlando Magic's end of season interviews took place on Thursday and all of the players and coaches were asked about the 2024-25 season as well as seasons ahead.
Head Coach Jamahl Mosley was asked if he was excited to maybe swap some defensive-minded players to bring in more offense.
Mosley responded abruptly, saying, "Yes. I'm okay with that."
Mosley seemed very convinced that their offensive struggles were the main problem behind not being able to get over the first round hump of the playoffs.
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In earlier interviews, Mosley took to the press, saying that he's ready to make that next step in the franchise and getting over the first round hump.
"There's no excitement in getting to the playoffs. It sounds good, but there's no excitement in getting bumped out of the first round... What sounds better, to me, is your aspirations to win a championship," he explained.
Orlando hasn't been able to make it past the first round of the postseason since 2010, a year that the Magic lost in the Eastern Conference Finals to the same team they lost to 15 years later – the Celtics.
It appears the Magic could make roster moves this offseason in an effort to build a true championship-contending team in Orlando.
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Related: Miami Heat Coach Sends Honest Jimmy Butler Message After Playoff Exit
Related: Ex-NBA Player Urges Heat to Target Bucks' Star Over Kevin Durant
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Newsweek
14 hours ago
- Newsweek
Report: Lakers Monitoring Interesting Roster Move
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The Los Angeles Lakers have made a few quality moves so far this offseason. As they look to build a contender around LeBron James and Luka Doncic, more work could be needed to make that goal become a reality. Early on in the offseason, the Lakers signed both Jake LaRavia and Deandre Ayton. More recently, they brought in veteran guard Marcus Smart, who is still known as a good perimeter defense. Could the team be looking to make another aggressive move? Perhaps they could look into adding another big man to the roster? Head coach JJ Redick of the Los Angeles Lakers looks on prior to the start of Game Four against the Minnesota Timberwolves during the First Round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs at Target Center on... Head coach JJ Redick of the Los Angeles Lakers looks on prior to the start of Game Four against the Minnesota Timberwolves during the First Round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs at Target Center on April 27, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. More Photo byThat is what one new report has suggested that Los Angeles is monitoring. Read more: Lakers' Luka Doncic Receives Strong Contract Advice From NBA Agent According to a report from Anthony Irwin of ClutchPoints, the Lakers have been paying attention to the scenario involving Chicago Bulls center Nikola Vucevic. "This does leave a few interesting free agents still, not even including eventual buyout candidates like Chicago's Nikola Vucevic," Irwin wrote. "As they did with Smart, the Lakers are closely monitoring that situation." Vucevic would be a very intriguing addition for Los Angeles if he is bought out by the Bulls. He would provide excellent depth behind Ayton and would bring both scoring and rebounding to the second unit. During the 2024-25 NBA season in Chicago, Vucevic played in 73 games ande made 72 starts. He averaged 18.5 points per game to go along with 10.1 rebounds and 3.5 assists, while also shooting 53 percent from the floor and 40.2 percent from the three-point line. His ability to stretch the floor from the center position would bring a valuable skill-set to the Lakers. Ayton is not a capable three-point shooter. Vucevic's presence would give JJ Redick more lineup options to match up with opponents. Read more: Knicks Linked to 2 Intriguing NBA Free Agency Options There is also a chance that Vucevic and Ayton could share the floor with each other at times, giving Los Angeles an elite rebounding lineup. At 34 years old, Vucevic is nearing the end of his career. Having an opportunity to play for the Lakers alongside James and Doncic would have to be intriguing to him. All of this will depend on whether or not the Bulls buy him out. That remains to be seen, but it's a situation worth keeping a close eye on and Los Angeles is clearly doing so. For more on the Los Angeles Lakers and general NBA news, head on over to Newsweek Sports.
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
Super Bowl-winning QB and tech reps all chasing same goal: Pop-A-Shot national glory
Brad Johnson stumbled across a broadcast of the Pop-A-Shot National Championship last year. Watching his favorite basketball arcade game on a big stage felt like two quarters dropping into the coin slot of his heart. With each rhythmic, rapid-fire shot, the former NFL quarterback felt a renewed desire to reach the zenith of sport again. Advertisement You know, like the time he won Super Bowl XXXVII. Friday night, Johnson will be one of eight competitors participating in this year's Pop-A-Shot National Championship in Orlando. He competed in a regional qualifier in May in St. Louis and finished with the third-highest score of the event by three points (Michael Pashkow of Berkeley Heights, N.J., won the qualifier) but was awarded a wild-card invitation to the national tournament. All of the competitors look to dethrone last year's champion, Josh Caputo of Montgomery, Ill. The event will be televised on ESPN2. 'This is like 'Top Gun,' the best of the best,' said Johnson, who quarterbacked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl win against the Oakland Raiders in 2003. 'These (Pop-A-Shot) guys, I know they're training like no other to do this.' After buying a Pop-A-Shot machine for his home in January, Johnson began shooting as many as 1,700 shots a day. He has now wound up at the precipice of yet another epic feat. Brad Johnson, who quarterbacked a Super Bowl winner, will vie for the Pop-A-Shot National Championship on Friday night. He sent this video to show he's ready. @TheRealPopAShot #BigBadBrad — Daniel Brown (@BrownieAthletic) July 31, 2025 Before he was an NFL quarterback, Johnson was an all-state basketball star at Owen High School in Black Mountain, N.C. He also was a two-sport college athlete at Florida State, playing sparingly over 56 games for the Seminoles' basketball team in the late '80s and shooting 51.8 percent from the field. Johnson, 56, will be the oldest competitor in the field. He is also the only former two-time Pro Bowl selection in a field comprised mostly of early-40s professionals with occupations ranging from technology services supervisor to automotive parts buyer to field service technician. Advertisement And then there's Jarrod Shappell, a 41-year-old San Francisco-based business consultant who tuned up for the national championship by repeatedly smoking Golden State Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski in practice rounds earlier this week (more on that later). Johnson qualifies as an underdog given his wild-card status and his lack of tournament experience. Then again, the quarterback who also played for Minnesota, Washington and Dallas during his 15-year NFL career began training long before the other competitors. 'I'm an '80s kind of guy — all the music and video games, and especially the arcade,' Johnson said. 'At every bowling alley, at every arcade, there was a Pop-A-Shot, and I've just always enjoyed it. Every sports bar, I found a challenge and tried to play somebody or tried to put up the high score.' In jumping into this world, Johnson has joined an unusual tribe. Shot-poppers make for a cultish following. Where would they rank in terms of zealous devotion? 'It's, like, K-Pop and Pop-A-Shot. It feels like that type of subculture,' Shappell said. 'But it's also, like, the funnest, most joy-filled group of people.' A Warriors season-ticket holder qualified for the Pop-A-Shot National Championship this Friday, so the team arranged a tune-up match against Brandin Podziemski. That's @jarrodshappell in the blue jersey. 👀 — Daniel Brown (@BrownieAthletic) July 31, 2025 To answer the obvious question: Yes, really. There is a fiercely competitive national championship for the addictive basketball arcade game born in 1981. A college coach named Ken Cochran invented Pop-A-Shot mainly to amuse the boys and girls attending his sports camps on the Kansas Wesleyan University campus. The coach's prototype quickly evolved into a machine featuring a lone basket with a 14-inch rim and a seven-inch ball. (Standard rims are 18 inches, and men's basketballs are nine inches in circumference.) Donnie Frye, a local welder, helped Cochran design the frame. Pete Sias, an engineer in Salina, Kan., designed the electronics. Advertisement In Pop-A-Shot, the basketballs automatically roll back to the shooter. The key to success is firing as many shots as possible without hesitation. The player with the highest score wins, but that's not necessarily the shooter with the most makes. The shots vary in value based on timing. In the latest version, the Pop-A-Shot Elite released in February, made shots can count as two points or three points depending on the shot clock. In the national tournament, rounds last 55 seconds. Cochran sold his Pop-A-Shot business to a Silicon Valley executive in 2016. Tony Stucker was living in San Mateo, Calif., and burned out working for several tech startups when he began looking online for a business he could buy. His search turned up Pop-A-Shot, there for the taking. '(Cochran) had been trying to sell the company for over a year before I even found it,'' Stucker said in a phone interview. 'Different people had kicked the tires, but the business really hadn't done much throughout the decade.' At that time, sales had slowed to roughly 300 units per year. There was no advertising. Competitors were dominating because they were on Amazon, and Pop-A-Shot hadn't bothered. 'A lot of the companies just wanted to buy it and take the name and throw everything else aside,'' Stucker said. 'I was like, 'No, I really want to focus on the legacy and build this back up.' I think (Cochran) appreciated that. We became very close.' Cochran died in 2017, a month shy of his 85th birthday, but his wish came true. Stucker guided Pop-A-Shot into the online market, and the company engineered licensing deals with several dozen NCAA teams. Stucker said several NBA players, including Dallas Mavericks guard D'Angelo Russell and Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker, have the home game. He gets a kick out of the Miami Marlins baseball team having a Pop-A-Shot Elite in its clubhouse; the barcode scan on the machines keeps track of the players' scores. Advertisement 'We see how much they play, and they've got some good players,'' Stucker said. 'Maybe they're not having a great year on the field, but they've got some good Pop-A-Shot players.' Above all, Stucker revived the Pop-A-Shot National Championship, which had been dormant for 25 years. After last year's hastily organized event, Stucker helped orchestrate 2025 qualifying events across the country, starting during the fan fest at the NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco. There were other regional qualifiers, during the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, the NCAA Final Four in San Antonio and the WNBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis, among others. 'The level of play is much higher,'' Stucker said. 'At our most recent qualifier in Vegas, there were a bunch of people just going back and forth with the high score. A lot of times, it came down to whether they missed two shots or three shots. It was just that simple.' There isn't a large money prize, but there is a trophy and a championship-style belt for the winner. Pop-A-Shot does pay for the finalists' airfare and accommodations. 'That's what they win,'' Stucker said. 'They win all-expense paid trips.' About that disputed wild-card entry … Sure, Johnson is a former NFL player as well as an accomplished trick-shot star with an unusual Instagram account. But none of that mattered — not even the Super Bowl ring — when he arrived at the St. Louis qualifier. 'They're there to win, and they want to beat me,'' Johnson said. 'There's no, 'Hey, good to meet you. I kept up with your career.' They want to beat you, and they want to beat you bad. 'It's true competition. It sounds crazy — it's a game of Pop-A-Shot, you know? But there, everybody's been putting in so much work. They've been doing this for years.' To get to the qualifier, Johnson left his home in Athens, Ga., at 2 a.m. and made an 11-hour drive to St. Louis. Things wrapped up about 3 a.m., and he turned around and drove home. Advertisement In between, Johnson put up 137 points in the preliminary action, a top score that held for most of the night. But in the first round of bracket play, the No. 3 seed, in the words of Stucker, 'kind of flamed out.' Pashkow eventually won the region and advanced. Still, Johnson left enough of an impression that he also got a nod. 'To be honest, we just liked him so much and thought he was such a good player,'' Stucker said. 'So, we gave him a wild-card entry.' From a marketing perspective, it's easy to see why Pop-A-Shot would want the draw of a noted NFL player. However, not everyone dug VIP treatment. 'I met some people in the community who were questioning Brad's credibility at the event,' Shappell said. 'But there are those videos — he scored very well on that machine — so I don't question that an NFL quarterback can compete.' Johnson, meanwhile, appreciated the reality check: 'Honestly, I'd never been beaten in a Pop-A-Shot event. But I did get beat up in St. Louis. Like, it was shocking. It's humbling.' Professional athletes don't have an advantage in this arena, not even the NBA guys. When the Warriors found out that Shappell — a season-ticket holder since 2013 — had advanced to the big dance, they arranged for a surprise perk. They invited him on Tuesday to tune up on a pair of arcade basketball games (not, technically, Pop-A-Shot machines) at a Chase Center sports bar. They did not tell Shappell that Podziemski, a shooting guard who averaged 11.7 points last season while hitting 51 percent from the field, would join him. It turned out to be a helpful session — for Podziemski. Shappell drubbed him 111-81 and 115-74 in two games before the Warriors guard skipped around just to study the real estate professional's form. Shappell's key was balance. With a shoulder-width stance and shoulders square to the basket, there wasn't a trace of a bounce in Shappell's form. He just grabbed the next basketball without looking and tossed them toward the rim with a blank stare and a soft touch. Advertisement 'I think it's best when you feel like a machine doing its job and you're not thinking about it,'' Shappell said. 'You almost feel like you're cranking out widgets versus actually shooting the basketball.' Indeed, a final game between the two tightened up before Shappell pulled away for a 118-101 victory. 'Every round I was there, I just learned little things,'' Podziemski said. 'How to shoot it. How to grab the ball. How to get as many (shots) up as I can.' Shappell honed his skills the old-fashioned way, celebrating his 40th birthday two years ago by traveling around town with a mission. 'We went to every San Francisco bar that had a Pop-A-Shot, and I stayed and broke the record before I went home,'' he said. 'I think it was seven bars. It was, perhaps, not what my friends had in mind to celebrate.' Now, it's Johnson's turn to step into the madness. During his Super Bowl triumph, he completed 18 of 34 passes for 215 yards, two touchdown passes and an interception. Not bad, but he knows he'll need to be way more accurate on Friday to add to his trophy case. 'None of us can run up and down the court anymore at our age,'' Johnson joked. 'It's just a fun event to be a part of.'
New York Times
a day ago
- New York Times
Should Lakers' 2020 bubble title ‘forever be marked by an asterisk'? Our staff weighs in
Five years later, do you believe the Los Angeles Lakers' 2020 bubble championship should have an asterisk attached to it? Daryl Morey, the Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations, says so. 'Had the Rockets won the title, I absolutely would have celebrated it as legitimate, knowing the immense effort and resilience required,' Morey, Houston's former general manager, told The Athletic's Joe Vardon in a piece this week reflecting on the NBA's Orlando bubble experiment five years later. 'Yet, everyone I speak to around the league privately agrees that it doesn't truly hold up as a genuine championship. Perhaps the lasting legacy of the NBA bubble is that the NBA should be proud of its leadership at both the beginning and end of the pandemic, even though the champion will forever be marked by an asterisk.' Advertisement Maybe Morey is just poking fun at Lakers fans or LeBron James, trying to get the goat of a potential GOAT. But the legitimacy of the Lakers' 2020 title still generates debate among NBA fans. So we asked our staff where they stand on the conversation. Should the Lakers' accomplishment be looked at with skepticism, like Morey suggests? Seventeen Athletic NBA writers weighed in and, well, every single one voted no on whether the Lakers title should be considered in any way invalid. That said, several of them argued the 2020 record books should carry a different kind of asterisk — just not for the reasons you might think. Vardon: There are no asterisks in any record book, in any major professional sport. Why would we apply one here? The Lakers didn't cheat. Rather, they won the game played by everyone else under the same rules. Dan Woike: The notion of 'asterisks' in sports should only apply if something cheapens an accomplishment due to things that are controllable. The bubble title is no better, no worse than any other in league history. It is the most different — and it was played under the same rules for the rest of the league. Under those conditions, the Lakers were the best. Eric Koreen: The 2019-20 NBA season was different than others, sure. There was a giant four-month break in the middle of the regular season, and no travel or crowds in the playoffs. Everybody faced the same obstacles, though. The teams played more than 70 regular-season games — more than a few lockout-shortened seasons in the last three decades. If anything, teams were healthier than usual. Unless a team cheated, I'm not going to claim 'asterisk.' Tony Jones: The Lakers started that season 24-3. Right before the COVID-19 shutdown, they were 49-14. They breezed through the playoffs. Los Angeles was the best team in the NBA from Game 1 to Game 82 and from win 1 in the playoffs to win 16. The best team won the NBA title in 2020, without question. Advertisement Josh Robbins: The notion there should be an asterisk next to the Lakers' title is hogwash. The Lakers entered the postseason as the Western Conference's top seed and entered the NBA Finals with a better regular-season win total than their finals opponent, the Miami Heat. If anything, playing in the bubble disadvantaged the Lakers because it robbed them of having four playoff series with home-court advantage. Granted, they didn't have to play postseason games in Denver when they faced the Nuggets in the conference finals but I think losing home-court advantage throughout the playoffs made the Lakers' road tougher, rather than easier. Jon Krawczynski: I actually think the Lakers deserve a different kind of asterisk. I think the bubble title needs an asterisk because it was harder than people want to acknowledge, not easier. It is well-documented how miserable teams were. Sequestered from family. Isolated. Doing something for society at large by going to work under very murky circumstances, with so many unanswered health questions, to try to give a shaken country some sense of normalcy. It was an mental endurance test the likes of which we have rarely seen. Sam Amick: Absolutely not. As someone who spent eight weeks inside the bubble, I can personally (and strongly) attest that the experience was mentally taxing in ways that are hard to explain unless you were there. So while I get the physically-based argument that the Lakers, and LeBron in particular, benefited from the lack of travel and increased rest time during that title run, I would counter that they handled the psychological aspect of the challenge far better than any of their counterparts (see: the LA Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks, etc.). That key factor, one that will always make this title even more impressive in my mind, should not be forgotten. John Hollinger: This title was harder than all the other ones, not easier. In addition to (gestures at everything going on at the time), consider this: Winning games meant you couldn't leave! Jay King: If the NBA appointed an arbiter of championships, Morey would not qualify for the position. As unique as the bubble was, the Lakers won under the same set of rules and circumstances every other team encountered that season. On their way to a championship, they beat Nikola Jokić, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, Damian Lillard, Jamal Murray and Jimmy Butler, just to name a few. The Lakers' path was only made tougher by the mental challenges they faced while living away from civilization for months. Though I suppose Morey himself made that path a bit easier by building a center-less team that Los Angeles was able to easily dispose of in the second round. Advertisement Mike Vorkunov: Putting an asterisk on the Lakers' championship borders on lawlessness. Let's put an asterisk on the 2021 Bucks too, since they played in a season where fans were mostly missing. Let's put an asterisk on every champion in a lockout-shortened season. Let's put an asterisk on every season where a title contender lost a star to injury. It's a slippery slope. Every title lives in a vacuum-sealed season, played out under its own conditions. Respect that and move on. Christian Clark: The best team won the championship in 2020. The Lakers were 49-14 before the shutdown. Someone trying to poke holes in their run might point out that Anthony Davis shot the ball unusually well (49.6 percent on midrange shots and 38.3 percent from 3) without fans in the stands. But again, every team was playing in those conditions. As long as the rules are the same for everyone, it's foolish to diminish the winner's accomplishments. Shakeia Taylor: The same way teams can only play who is in front of them (injuries, etc.), in this case, teams can only play in the circumstances in front of them. Eric Nehm: Given the context provided and the framing given to me for this question, the answer is clearly no. All championships count the exact same. At some point, though, we're going to need to have a conversation about what an asterisk means. It doesn't have a positive or negative connotation, it's just a symbol used in text to inform someone looking at a record book that there is more context needed to explain whatever precedes that asterisk. Whether we're talking about seasons shortened by a pandemic or lockouts, seasons played before the 3-point line or the NBA-ABA merger or early seasons that featured less than 10 teams, there are a lot of NBA championships that could use some more context. Kelly Iko: It's easy for front-office executives, the majority of whom were privileged to remain in the comfort of their homes during a global pandemic, to downplay and essentially discredit the bubble. I've spoken to enough players who went through it to know it was one of the most difficult experiences of their professional careers. Between COVID-19 and heightening racial tensions from the outside world, NBA players were put through an awful lot in a relatively short period of time. The Lakers should be celebrated for winning it all — we're talking about a team that was on a 65-win pace prior to Orlando — they were elite and fully deserving of the Larry O'Brien. Law Murray: Congratulations to everyone involved in the 2020 bubble, but I'm good on never talking about this season again. It was a terrible time for everything, including basketball, and here we are discussing salty executive opinions. Yes, the season was different. It certainly benefited some teams more than others to get a four-month break, then have no travel while the postseason played out. But every team knew the circumstances going in. The Lakers got the 16 wins that no one else could get. Asterisk talk is always insufferable, and it all started with a Lakers coach trying to invalidate what Gregg Popovich and the 1999 San Antonio Spurs achieved. At least that team won another title within five years. Fred Katz: It happened. We saw it happen. There were 30 teams. There were 16 playoff teams. The Lakers competed in the same conditions as everyone else. They won. Stop trying to minimize other people's extraordinary accomplishments. Bringing them down to your level won't make you happier. Don't be toxic to society. Everyone, move on. Jason Quick: I mean, what are we talking about here? The champion emerged out of an environment everyone was part of. No advantages. No hidden challenges. Just basketball. (Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Matt Rourke/AP Photo, Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)
