“He was big in player development” former NBA coach George Karl told the New York Post’s Marc Berman, “He was really good with basketball intellect and really good with players. That’s the combo you need in today’s world and changing the attitudes of the young players.”
Not every basketball coach has these qualities. Only the strongest leaders have both the knowledge to master such a complex sport and the talent to help players understand them too. This set of skills is usually exclusive to the NBA’s most successful play callers, such as Gregg Popovich and Erik Spoelstra, but neither was the subject of Karl’s praise in that quote.
He was referring to Jamahl Mosley, the newest head coach of the Orlando Magic.
Karl is not the only coach to laud the Dallas Mavericks’s defensive coordinator. Former NBA champion Rick Carlisle called Mosley a “great young coach” and a “great communicator,” pointing to how well several of the Mavericks’ young players perform under Mosley’s guidance. And he’s right. Few assistant coaches in the NBA know how to develop young talent quite like Mosley does. Unlike most other coaches, Mosley truly engages. He actively participates in drills and warmups with the team. He takes genuine interest in his players’ personal lives. He trusts his players to make the right decisions on the court and holds them accountable when they do not. Because of that, his players trust him in return. That’s not an easy feat for most coaches to accomplish, but it is for someone who can connect with players the way Mosley can.
Mosley’s knack for getting the most out of his players may stem from his experience as a basketball player himself. He played college basketball for four years at the University of Colorado, earning a spot on the All-Big 12 third team in his junior year (2000). Despite not getting selected in the 2001 NBA Draft, Mosley never lost the passion he had for basketball. It only grew stronger, strong enough to take him overseas for four years to play for five different teams in four different continents. Most people would hesitate to travel far away from home to pursue such an inconsistent career path, but not Mosley. He took this mental challenge as an opportunity to get closer to basketball, always bringing his unbridled energy and enthusiasm to every court he stepped on. He just loved the game that much. And that love taught him many valuable qualities that would shape who he’d later become. Moving to different countries year after year must have taught him how to adapt to quick changes and tough decisions, a skill he still possesses to this day. With each new team he played for, Mosley met brand new people from several walks of life, most of which were far different from his own. But he learned how to connect with all of them as both a teammate and a friend. He understood each teammate and coach as if he had known them for his entire life, regardless of how different their upbringings were to his own. That ability, as well as his ability to adapt whenever necessary, would soon lead him to the career he was destined to have: coaching.
Mosley’s first coaching gig was with the Denver Nuggets, a job he took the same year he played his last basketball game as a pro. He worked as both a scout and a player development coach under the aforementioned George Karl, but neither title would last for long. Two years later, Karl noticed the young coach’s passion, intellect, and the trust players placed in him, and decided that Mosley’s talents would fit better as an assistant coach. Such an honor is rare, especially for a mere scout who was younger than some of his players. But that did not faze Mosley. He made the most out of his promotion before piquing the interest of Mike Brown and the Cleveland Cavaliers, who hired him for the same position in 2010. Cleveland would not be his last stop, however, as he would join Rick Carlisle’s staff in Dallas in 2014. Mosley was a perfect fit there. His aptitude at getting the most out of his players won Carlisle’s respect and admiration, which earned him the title of defensive coordinator for the Mavericks four years later. This was Mosley’s big break as a coach. He became a vital asset to the team, as he was the guy that players trusted the most, especially Luka Doncic.
Doncic praised his assistant coach at any chance he could, because Mosley was more than just an assistant coach to him. He was a man that Doncic could trust with the trajectory of his career. That trust was not unfounded, though, as Mosley turned Doncic into one of the NBA’s brightest superstars in less than a year. Other teams noticed Doncic’s transformation and the charismatic assistant coach that allowed it to happen, but that was not all they noticed. They observed how close the two became during that process. Doncic’s relationship with Mosley was so strong that it made Carlisle worry over his own job security. That could explain why, upon his resignation, Carlisle recommended the Mavericks replace him with his former player Jason Kidd instead of the assistant coach he trusted for seven years. Dallas took Carlisle’s suggestion and chose not to hire Mosley as his successor, and that is their loss. Fans and players alike adored Mosley for the relationships and growth he gave everyone, not just Doncic, another difficult challenge that Mosley conquered with ease.
Soon, Mosley will pack his bags and move down to Orlando, Florida. There he will face his biggest challenge yet: lead the Orlando Magic as their fifteenth head coach. He got the job the same way he became an assistant coach with the Nuggets, for his ability to bring out the best in his young players. But this time, things will be different. Instead of having to report to someone else and coach to their way, Mosley will have total authority for the first time in his coaching career. He now has the freedom to develop his players in any way he wants, as well as more young players to develop than he’s ever had before. Mosley can rejuvenate the seemingly lost career of Markelle Fultz, turning him into the star that experts thought he would become. He can make Jonathan Isaac one of the NBA’s most dominant defenders, even more than he already is. He can give Wendell Carter Jr. the ability to become a worthy successor to Nikola Vucevic, and he can take away the “draft bust” label analysts have given to Mo Bamba. He can allow Chuma Okeke to become the 3-and-D specialist that Jeff Weltman knows he can be. He can spark Cole Anthony the way he sparked Luka Doncic, and he can make Denver regret trading away RJ Hampton.
The possibilities are endless for Mosley, but this job will not be easy for him. He has never been a head coach before, and with his newfound freedom comes tremendous responsibility to check egos, keep players happy, and ensure that they all improve. But Weltman and John Hammond agree that if there’s one man who can carry out each of those tasks, it is Mosley. They watched him blossom into one of the NBA’s best player developers during his time in Dallas. They saw how easy it was for him to earn the trust of his players, coaches, and teammates during his playing days. They believe in Mosley. Because in each of those difficult scenarios, Mosley often did what most coaches fail to do: tackle every challenge given to him and enable others to do the same. That is what makes him an elite assistant coach. That’s what makes him a gifted basketball mind. But most important, it’s what makes him Jamahl Mosley, the newest head coach of the Orlando Magic.
By Luke Scotchie