Kelvin Sampson the top candidate to be the Orlando Magic head coach for some odd reason

Their search for a head coach has generated very little buzz, but the Orlando Magic are reportedly taking a look at University of Houston coach Kelvin Sampson.

Since firing Frank Vogel right after his second season, the Orlando Magic’s search for a new head coach has generated three confirmed interviews and even less buzz. But according to Marc Stein of the New York Times, on the heels of a similar report from Mitch Lawrence of Sporting News, University of Houston coach Kelvin Sampson has become a top candidate for the job.

Sampson led the Cougars to a 27-8 record this past season, his fourth at the school, including the school’s first NCAA Tournament win in over 30 years. Over 25 seasons as a college coach, at Washington State, Oklahoma, Indiana and Houston, Sampson has a 508-275 record (.649 win percentage). He has won Coach of the Year in the AAC (2018), Big 8 (1995) and the Pac-10 (1991), and he was AP National Coach of the Year in 1995.

But Sampson does have coaching experience in the NBA. After leaving Indiana under a cloud of NCAA sanctions, and being given a five-year show-cause penalty, he spent three seasons each as an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks and Houston Rockets, before returning to the college game at Houston in 2014.

Magic president Jeff Weltman worked for the Toronto Raptors as general manager from 2013 until he was hired away a year ago. So that makes former Raptors’ head coach Dwane Casey a potential candidate for Orlando, as well as one of his former assistants in Nick Nurse and Toronto’s G-League coach Jerry Stackhouse. Of course, Nurse and Stackhouse are both candidates to replace Casey as Raptors’ coach, and they haven’t been prominently mentioned to replace Vogel.

The Magic are clearly taking their time to find a new coach while keeping things out of the media rumor mill. There’s nothing wrong with those things, as long as the search ultimately yields the right guy.

Next: 5 candidates to replace Dwane Casey as Raptors coach

Sampson’s name carries some cache, and he has worked on an NBA bench. But that should not put him atop what has been a very short list of candidates in Orlando.