Sean Sweeney draws up a Franz Wagner back-cut for Jon Gruden and asks why the Magic can’t win it all: ‘Who said we can’t?’

Sean Sweeney has not coached a regular-season game for the Orlando Magic yet. He has, though, already drawn up a play for Jon Gruden. In a 20-minute sit-down with the former Super Bowl-winning coach, taped before training camp opened and posted in full on Gruden’s YouTube channel on Monday, Sweeney diagrammed a back-cut for Franz Wagner, explained why a lob dunk is worth more than 1.6 points per shot, and gave a three-word answer when Gruden asked why the Magic can’t do what the Knicks and Spurs did.

“Who said we can’t?” Sweeney said.

The interview landed two days before Sweeney’s debut. The Magic open at home against the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET at Kia Center, which is 2 a.m. Thursday in Cairo.

The play: misdirection for Wagner

Gruden asked for one play from the Orlando playbook and suggested “a shot for Wagner.” Sweeney picked a misdirection set. The point guard brings the ball up, Wagner comes up through a zipper cut toward the top of the floor, and the ball goes into the center in the post. Wagner then moves as if he is going to set a back screen for the four man.

The trick is what the defense does next. Defenders guarding that action “may try to switch,” Sweeney said. So as the four man starts to move and Wagner’s defender slides over to pick up the four, “we’re back cutting him to the rim, and that’s our first look right there.” If the cut is not open, the four sets a screen for the shooting guard, who comes to the top of the floor “for one of those threes that you like so much.”

“I really have no idea what you just said, but I love that,” Gruden said. Sweeney, a Minnesota native and former college guard at Green Bay and St. Thomas, also had to defend his drawing. When he asked whether his circles were okay, Gruden told him they were “a lot better than Sean McVay’s.”

Shot allocation with three 20-point scorers

The more serious part of the interview was about how Orlando shares the ball. Gruden pointed out that the Magic now have three players who have averaged more than 20 points a game, with Desmond Bane joining Paolo Banchero and Wagner. Sweeney answered with numbers. “If you get a lob dunk every time, you’re going to get over 1.6 points per shot. That’s an insanely high number,” he said. “If you take tough shots, that points per shot is going to go down.” His goal is to find “the best shot on each possession” and “activate all five guys.”

Gruden then told a story from his Raiders days, when Rich Gannon asked him whether to throw to Jerry Rice or Tim Brown on the first play of a preseason game. He asked what Jalen Suggs should do if one star gets 23 shots and another gets seven. Sweeney joked that he would “call Jon Gruden” and ask what he told Gannon. Then he gave a real answer: basketball has 82 games, not 17. “I might get 10 shots tonight,” he said, “but tomorrow we know we’re going to make a point of emphasis to get you a few more.” In the end, he said, “you got to trust the quarterback,” and “oftentimes the defense is going to tell us what to do and where the ball should go.”

That fits with what he said about the point guard spot. “If I pass the ball to you, you’re the point guard,” Sweeney said. Anyone holding the ball has to know “Who am I? Who is my teammate? Who’s covering me? And who’s covering my teammate?”

Threes, pace and a ‘call sheet’

Gruden asked whether 53 three-point attempts in a game is normal. Sweeney said it can be, for teams like the Celtics or “an old Mike D’Antoni Rockets team,” because shooters are now good enough to take threes in volume and at high efficiency. He split offense into two parts: efficiency, meaning the quality of each shot, and opportunity, meaning how many possessions you get through offensive rebounds and forced turnovers. For some teams, he said, “jacking a bunch of threes is how they might want to do it.”

Asked whether NBA coaches carry a game plan like an NFL call sheet, Sweeney said yes, “but it’s not as advanced.” He compared the modern NBA to up-tempo college football. Because the game moves so fast, he said, a team has to be “really strong in your concepts, your principles,” and the coach has to “have your menu and be ready to make those calls” when the whistle blows.

One sentence each on Giannis, Luka, Kyrie and Wemby

Sweeney has spent most of his career on Jason Kidd’s staffs in Brooklyn, Milwaukee and Dallas, and last season he ran the defense for a Spurs team that went 62-20 and reached the NBA Finals. Gruden asked for quick takes on the stars he has coached. On Giannis Antetokounmpo: “His greatest strength was his work ethic … he didn’t skip steps, but he took them faster because he worked so hard.” On Luka Dončić: “The best offensive player … and when the stage was the biggest, he was the best.” On Kyrie Irving: “Savant,” and “a true craftsman.”

On Victor Wembanyama, Sweeney told a story from his first days in San Antonio. “The two things he asked from me when I got to San Antonio was accountability and make sure I don’t waste time,” Sweeney said. “And this is a kid who was 21.”

Sweeney also named the people who shaped him: Kidd, Marty Simmons from his time at Evansville, Ben Jacobson at Northern Iowa, and longtime NBA assistant Tim Grgurich, the coach he said he has worked with “the most throughout my career.” He called second-round pick Izaiyah Nelson, who played his college ball at South Florida in Tampa, “tough, hard-nosed,” the kind of player who will “strain for that last inch.” Nelson is on a two-way contract.

Where the Magic stand going into Wednesday

Gruden brought up last spring’s first round, when the Magic led the top-seeded Pistons three games to one before losing in seven. That loss led to Jamahl Mosley’s firing and to Sweeney’s hiring on June 1. Sweeney said his job is “to take that next step,” and that every season means climbing the mountain again from the start. “Our job is to try to take it a little bit further, do it a little bit longer, do it a little bit better.”

The opener will test that quickly. Wagner left Friday’s preseason finale with right shoulder soreness. He did light work on Sunday, and on Monday he took part in a walkthrough during a lighter practice day built around film, Jason Beede reported. Noah Penda has a partial hamstring tear, and Anthony Black is still working back from an ankle sprain that cost him the whole preseason.

Sweeney’s answer on how the Magic get there was a list of questions, not a promise. “Are we preparing right now the way that we’re getting ready to play the season? … Are we connected? Are we tough? Are we competitive?” he said. “Are our values showing up in our behaviors? And if we can answer yes to those things, now we’re taking the steps towards our goals.”