The New Orleans Pelicans are hiring former Orlando Magic coach Jamahl Mosley as the franchise’s next head coach on a five-year deal, league sources confirmed to The Athletic.Mosley, 47, spent the last five seasons as the head coach in Orlando and led the Magic to the playoffs each of the last three seasons before Orlando fired him earlier this month. His departure came after the Magic lost their first-round series against the Detroit Pistons.During his time with the Magic, Mosley finished with a 189-221 record in five seasons, but he also led a young roster through a rebuild and helped establish an identity as one of the most rugged defensive units in the Eastern Conference. Orlando finished the 2023-24 regular season ranked third in defensive rating and the 2024-25 season second in defensive rating before it fell to 13th this season.Orlando pushed two of its three first-round series under Mosley to seven games, despite coming in as the lower seed. The Magic had this season end tragically, blowing a 3-1 lead against the No. 1-seeded Pistons and losing the final two games of the series by a combined 36 points.Mosley’s success with developing young talent is one of the main reasons New Orleans viewed him as one of the top candidates on the market. Under Mosley, young Orlando players like Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, Wendell Carter Jr. and Jalen Suggs impressed at times under the bright lights and looked unafraid when matched up against some of the top teams in the East.Ultimately, his teams consistently fell short on the offensive end, particularly in the half court, and their inability to find solutions on that end of the floor in big games cost them. The Magic finished bottom five in offensive rating in three of Mosley’s first four seasons. This season was the highest his Orlando teams have ranked, coming in at No. 18 in offensive efficiency. Banchero and Wagner served as de facto point guards, and the offense often looked clunky and unimaginative, relying on Banchero and Wagner to receive screens from teammates to create mismatches and drive to generate shots at the rim, free-throw opportunities or kickout 3-pointers.Perhaps Mosley’s lowest moment as Magic coach came in Game 6 against the Pistons when Orlando put up one of the worst offensive performances in recent postseason history. After going into halftime with a 22-point lead, the Magic missed 23 consecutive shots in the second half and were held to 8 points in the fourth quarter, as Detroit methodically put them away.The Magic were poised to become the seventh No. 8 seed in NBA history to knock out a No. 1 seed in the first round, but their collapse helped seal Mosley’s fate after what many already considered a tumultuous season for a Magic team that entered the season with high hopes.The search for a new head coach in New Orleans didn’t heat up until recent weeks, but the process has been ongoing since Pelicans lead executive Joe Dumars fired former coach Willie Green in November following a 2-10 start. After Green’s dismissal, Pelicans assistant James Borrego took over as interim head coach for the final 70 games of the regular season and led New Orleans to a 24-46 record.Borrego was one of the candidates the Pelicans interviewed for the permanent position, along with Brooklyn Nets assistant Steve Hetzel and Milwaukee Bucks assistants Darvin Ham and Rajon Rondo. But Mosley has been a candidate the Pelicans have kept an eye on for months.The Mosley hire fits with what Dumars has always prioritized with the teams he’s built, dating back to his days in Detroit: defense and tenacity.“I would add more toughness to this team,” Dumars said during his end-of-season news conference in April. “We have to be able to compete every night. We cannot get banged around, pushed around. We have to be physical and compete every night.“There were some nights we did it, but there were too many nights we didn’t compete at a high enough level for me. You can’t get past that in this league. You can’t skip that.”With Zion Williamson, Trey Murphy, Derik Queen and Jeremiah Fears on the roster, the Pelicans should have enough to be competitive on most nights when healthy, but Mosley will be tasked with getting the young talent in New Orleans to take more pride on the defensive end, along with competing at a high level on a nightly basis.Based on everything Dumars has said publicly, the Pelicans don’t appear to be a team looking to begin an extended rebuild, despite losing 50-plus games in back-to-back seasons for the first time in franchise history. Along those lines, Dumars said he has no intentions of moving on from Williamson, the oft-injured face of the franchise, this summer.