Jamahl Mosley will not be out of work for long. The New Orleans Pelicans are hiring the former Orlando Magic head coach to run their bench, ESPN senior NBA insider Shams Charania reported on Tuesday morning, capping a coaching search that had circled through Darvin Ham, Rajon Rondo and James Borrego.
The hire comes 11 days after the Magic dismissed Mosley on May 8 in the wake of Orlando's first-round playoff exit to the Detroit Pistons. Mosley spent five seasons in Orlando, leading the Magic to three postseasons during his tenure and helping shepherd Paolo Banchero through his early growth years.
"NBA Insider Shams Charania, the New Orleans Pelicans are hiring Jamahl Mosley as their new head coach," SportsCenter reported. "He spent the past five seasons as head coach of the Magic, but was fired earlier this month after Orlando's first round series loss to the Pistons."
The Pelicans had been operating under interim head coach James Borrego since November, when New Orleans parted ways with Willie Green. Borrego steadied a roster ravaged by injury through the second half of the regular season, but the franchise long signaled that the permanent job would go to someone with experience leading a postseason team.
Mosley fits that brief. Orlando reached the playoffs three times in the past four seasons under his watch, including a Game 7 first-round loss to Cleveland in 2024 and a stronger 2025 push before this year's first-round defeat to the Pistons. That collapse a 3-1 lead that turned into a 3-1 hole was the spark for Magic ownership and team president Jeff Weltman to make the change, and reporting on May 7 from Shams Charania had warned that "this is just the start" of a wider coaching reset.
The symmetry of that reset is now striking. Mosley was the first head coach fired in the Magic's coaching purge; he is the first hired off the carousel.
New Orleans inherits a roster that, when healthy, has been one of the more dangerous in the West, anchored by Zion Williamson, Trey Murphy, Herbert Jones and CJ McCollum. The franchise has not yet found a settled identity since the Anthony Davis era ended; Mosley, who built much of his Orlando reputation on a connective defensive scheme and a willingness to play multiple big bodies together, will be asked to do something similar in the Big Easy.
There is one immediate question for Mosley. The 2026 NBA draft lottery is set for June 2 and the Pelicans, who held one of the league's worst records, have a meaningful pre-lottery decision to make about how they reposition their roster. Mosley arrives early enough to sit at the table for those discussions.
NBA analyst Danny Green, who was on SportsCenter Tuesday morning, did not specifically address the hire but offered a wider note that fits Mosley's moment in New Orleans, that the western conference is a different test for any coach with eastern conference instincts: "You play against a Phoenix Suns team, then you play a Los Angeles Lakers team, then you run into a San Antonio Spurs team, which is a totally different defensive juggernaut. It can be quite a bit shocking."
For Mosley, the shock will be welcomed. Eleven days ago, he was out of a job. Now he has one of the most resource-rich and roster-stable rebuilds in the league waiting for his fingerprints.
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*Originally published on [NBA News Global](https://nbanews.global/article/jamahl-mosley-pelicans-head-coach-shams-charania-orlando-fired-may-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
