On Feb. 1, 2003, the University of St. Thomas men’s basketball team trailed Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota by three points with 12 seconds to play in regulation on the road.
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For the St. Thomas Tommies, it was a stunning situation. The program was riding a 30-game win streak over Saint Mary’s that dated back to January 1988.
The Tommies were nearing catastrophe.
Fortunately for St. Thomas, Sean Sweeney, a 5-foot-11 freshman point guard, had other plans.
“I remember Sean coming down the court and just hoisting a 28-footer, and I remember thinking to myself as a young assistant, ‘What in the world is he doing?’ And sure enough, it was nothing but bottom,” Johnny Tauer, the head coach at St. Thomas, who was an assistant at the school in 2003, recently told the Orlando Sentinel in a phone interview.
“We squeaked out a win in overtime, which we had no right earning,” Tauer said. “He lived for those moments where the game’s on the line.”
Fast-forward 23 years and Sweeney is taking another shot, though this one has bigger stakes on a much bigger stage. The former San Antonio Spurs assistant coach is the new head coach of the Orlando Magic.
Much like that important moment as a freshman guard more than two decades ago, Sweeney, now 42, has also been building toward this next critical moment in his life.
The steps he’s taken along the way — some intentional, some not — have helped turn his dream of becoming an NBA head coach into a reality.
To understand, however, why Sweeney was confident enough to take — and make — such a shot in college, why that confidence still permeates his personality as he becomes a first-time NBA head coach after 13 years as an assistant and why the Magic ultimately hired him, you have to go back to the beginning and hear from the people who were there.
“To me, it’s so cool to see somebody at this point in his career have the success he’s had but also have this opportunity,” Tauer said. “It’s the culmination of just literally two decades of non-stop pouring his heart and soul into basketball.
“And there are no shortcuts.”
‘He was a great leader on the floor’
At the time of that 2003 game, Tauer worked for Steve Fritz — the men’s basketball coach at St. Thomas for 31 years who retired in 2019.
In 2000, Fritz sent Tauer, a first-year volunteer assistant, to go watch the big Catholic high school rivalry in Minnesota between Cretin-Derham Hall and St. Thomas Academy.
Tauer was tasked to scout three St. Thomas seniors. Instead, he discovered someone else.
“I remember coming back to him and I said, ‘Well they’re all good players but there’s this little red-headed junior that we have to recruit.’ Like, he was the toughest kid on the court,” Tauer said.
That red-headed junior was Sweeney, a young guard who attended Cretin-Derham alongside future Baseball Hall of Famer Joe Mauer.
After pursuing walk-on opportunities at Division I programs, Sweeney, a St. Paul, Minnesota, native, committed to the University of St. Thomas in the summer of 2002 and started as a freshman.
Sweeney transferred to Wisconsin-Green Bay for the 2003-04 season but returned to St. Thomas after one year. As a senior, he made both the all-conference team and the conference’s all-defensive team.
“He always felt very accountable for everything he did,” Fritz, now in his late 70s, recently told the Sentinel over the phone. “The good things he wanted to know, and bad things, he’d say, ‘How can we correct it?’ He was that kind of player all the time.”
His senior campaign started a run of 12 consecutive Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference men’s basketball titles for St. Thomas.
“Much like the way he coaches — and I could’ve told you he would be a great coach then — he was a tireless worker, unbelievably passionate about basketball (and) he studied the game, even at that age,” Tauer said.
When his playing career ended in 2006, Sweeney graduated from the university with a degree in sociology, and began coaching.
“He was a great leader on the floor,” Fritz said. “I wasn’t surprised when he got into coaching. He’s earned where he is 20 years later just because of making good at every spot he’s been.”
‘You’re never going to have to guess what he’s thinking’
In stops at Anoka-Ramsey Community College as an assistant coach (2006-07), the University of Evansville as the director of basketball operations (2007-09), the Academy of Art University as an assistant coach (2009-10) and the University of Northern Iowa as video coordinator (2010-11), there was always a recurring theme: Sweeney’s work ethic and his understanding of basketball continued to impress.
“For a guy just getting into coaching, his maturity level was beyond his years,” said Marty Simmons, who hired him at Evansville after the late Rick Majerus left a 30-minute voicemail sharing why Simmons should employ Sweeney. “He gave me ideas constantly.”
“The one thing that I remember is that Sean develops good relationships with players,” said Mark Sembrowich, who worked with him at the Academy of Art University. “The way he coaches and works, players don’t want to let him down because they know that he works really hard.”
They were not the only ones who saw it.
“His work ethic is tremendous and that stood out during the year or so that we were together,” said Ben Jacobson, who brought Sweeney on at Northern Iowa. “He’s just got a passion for the game that motivates him and drives him to get the most out of every day.”
Jacobson recalled the interview process before he hired Sweeney.
“He was so impressive,” said Jacobson. “I got up and we walked away and I was like, ‘Man, if we could get this guy to join our staff, it’s going to be a home run.’ And then my second thought was, ‘Who was interviewing who?’
“And I say that and mean that in a really positive way,” Jacobson added. “You’re never going to have to guess what he’s thinking or what’s on his mind. He is very direct, and I think that’s a really good thing.”
‘You’re not the video coordinator anymore, you’re a coach’
Jacobson remembers when Sweeney made the jump to the pros roughly five years removed from finishing his playing career.
After one season at Northern Iowa, Sweeney landed his first job in the NBA. He became a video coordinator for the then-New Jersey Nets under head coach Avery Johnson.
“I didn’t know what direction it would go when he left and went to the NBA,” Jacobson said. “Now as it started to happen, I’m not at all surprised that we’re on the phone today talking about Sean being a head coach.”
In 2011, however, Sweeney was a ways away from becoming an NBA head coach.
The video coordinator role was essentially an entry-level position. But it didn’t take long for Sweeney to catch the eye of then-Nets assistant coach P.J. Carlesimo.
“It was easy to spot how talented he was, how smart he was — and, probably as importantly, what a work ethic he had,” said Carlesimo, who was an NBA head coach for years and now works in broadcasting. “He literally slept in the building.”
The season after Sweeney joined the Nets, the franchise moved from the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Right after Christmas 2012, the now Brooklyn Nets fired Johnson and made Carlesimo the interim coach.
At the time, Nets general manager Billy King didn’t let Carlesimo add a coach to the staff despite being down a person after Johnson’s dismissal.
So Carlesimo promoted Sweeney to assistant coach for the remainder of the 2012-13 season.
“He still had to do a lot of that (video) work, but I made him a coach,” Carlesimo said. “We said, ‘Hey, you’re not the video coordinator anymore, you’re a coach.’ We got him out of the (video) room and got him on the floor and got him doing more things.”
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After a 14-14 start that led to Johnson’s dismissal, the Nets went 35-19 under Carlesimo and finished fourth in the East.
Brooklyn, however, fell in the first round to the Chicago Bulls, and Carlesimo wasn’t retained. It was his final coaching job after a 40-year career.
“We weren’t the best team in the East but it was a good team,” he said. “Sweens, (it was) no question, truly, how smart he was.”
Carlesimo shared an example of a coach asking their video coordinator for clips of one player’s mistakes so they could go through the film with them. In some cases, the coach would have to watch film alongside the video coordinator and point out which footage he’d want them to cut up to show the player.
“That’s fine but it’s a lot better when you can say, ‘Sweens, show me the things we screwed up last night,’ and he’d bring you 10 clips and you just pick the five best ones because he’s good enough to discern that himself and tell a player what he needs to work on,” Carlesimo said. “You could just give him a mission and he’s going to give you a finished product.
“That takes a special talent,” Carlesimo added. “It also takes trust. You’ve got to have somebody that you know is going to give you those man hours to go through a game and give you just the clips you need, not a whole bunch of wasted time. It’s such a luxury to have somebody who’s really good in that room.”
Carlesimo shared that some video coordinators get stuck in that role for years or only rise to the level of being an assistant coach, unless, “They’re smart as hell, if they know basketball, if they can relate with people and if they have a great work ethic.”
And that was Sweeney, according to Carlesimo who also pointed to other NBA head coaches who began their pro careers as a video coordinator.
“You know particularly when it’s a young guy,” Carlesimo said. “Like, we’re going to miss him doing video but come on, he can be more beneficial to us now as an assistant coach.
“So, that’s why you’ve got guys like Erik Spoelstra, Frank Vogel or Mike Budenholzer — guys that were the whole package and it just happened that they started in the video room,” he added.
While the Nets moved on from Carlesimo, the organization kept Sweeney after Jason Kidd became the next head coach in Brooklyn for the 2013-14 season.
As a full-time assistant, Sweeney followed Kidd to Milwaukee for four years from 2014-18 and rejoined him in Dallas from 2021-25. In between, Sweeney worked under coach Dwane Casey from 2018-21 in Detroit.
“I liked the way he worked, I liked the way that we connected,” Kidd told the Evansville Courier and Press about Sweeney in 2016. “He was very easy to work with, so it was a no-brainer.”
As the years passed, there was a certain inevitability to the idea of Sweeney becoming a head coach in the NBA, Carlesimo said.
“Literally, if we could go back in time and you’d talk to me, I could’ve told you then how successful he was going to be and that he’d be a coach in the league,” Carlesimo said.
“It was just a matter of time.”
‘He’s wanted this from day one’
After four seasons in Dallas, which included a trip to the 2024 Finals, Sweeney was poached from the Mavericks by Mitch Johnson to join his staff in San Antonio this past season.
Johnson was entering his first full year as head coach of the Spurs. He filled in for Gregg Popovich for the majority of the 2024-25 campaign because of the Hall of Fame coach’s serious health issues.
Following in Popovich’s footsteps came with high expectations. Johnson knew he needed to build a strong staff. In part, that’s why it included Sweeney.
“I just took a liking to his ability to articulate his basketball philosophy and what he thought about,” Johnson said about Sweeney in a story at twincities.com. “Whether it was just the game and NBA coaching in general — in terms of competitiveness and how hard you should coach and hold guys accountable. But also the modern, creative part and thinking outside the box.”
Led by defensive player of the year Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs returned to the Finals for the first time since 2014, but lost in five competitive games to the New York Knicks, who captured their first title since 1973.
Sweeney is credited with the transformation of San Antonio’s defense that went from 25th in 2024-25 before he joined the Spurs to the third-best in the league this past year.
Word of the finalizing of an agreement with Orlando first came out the night before Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. Sweeney was formally named the 16th head coach in Magic franchise history on June 1, and he turned 42 two days later.
While he’s been described as a defensive-minded coach in the time since the hire, Carlesimo made it clear he’s far more than that.
“It happens in our league all of the time,” Carlesimo said. “Everybody kind of pigeon-holed him or said, ‘Oh, he’s a defensive guy.’ He’s not just a defensive guy. He’s just as good on the other end. He just as easily could’ve been the offensive coordinator in any of these places.
“And because the Spurs (were) so good defensively — everybody’s going, ‘Well, he’s a defensive guru,’ almost making it sound like all he knows about is that side of the ball,” he added. “That’s not the case at all. He’s the full package. But he’s got to do it.”
So how will Sweeney handle becoming a head coach for the first time?
Those who’ve known him the longest aren’t worried about any adjustment or transition period.
“Sometimes young people, whether they’re players or coaches, want to know, ‘Well, how do I get there?’ ” St. Thomas University’s Tauer said.
“As somebody who’s followed Sean around for the last 20 years since he graduated in 2006, they would see, I’d bet you not a day has gone by where he didn’t try to hone his craft of coaching.”
Added Fritz, Sweeney’s head coach at St. Thomas: “He’s wanted this from day one, there’s no question about it.”
Of course, it won’t be easy. And there will be immediate pressure in Orlando after three first-round exits in the playoffs under previous coach Jamahl Mosley.
It’ll be the first time the young core of Paolo Banchero (23), Franz Wagner (24) and Jalen Suggs (25) play for someone other than Mosley in the NBA. Desmond Bane, last offseason’s major addition after a trade with Memphis, saw his first Grizzlies’ coach, Taylor Jenkins, get fired during the 2024-25 season, so the 28-year-old has been through a coaching change before as a pro.
Sweeney won’t be afraid to embrace the expectations or ask for help, his previous bosses say.
“There are some things as a first-time head coach, you’re not going to learn about yourself until you’re in it,” said Jacobson, who hired Sweeney at Northern Iowa. “The thing I would tell you about Sean is, he’s OK with that. He’ll call people. He’ll ask questions. He’s not going to feel like, ‘Hey, I have all the answers, I’m only going to do it this way.’
“He’s got humility about him,” Jacobson added. “It’s quite the combination to be that determined and that uncompromising — and have a humility about you to be willing to pick up the phone and ask people.”
From the time he spent hitting big shots as a freshman in college to becoming the next leader of the Orlando Magic, Sweeney has grown both as a coach and as a person.
He has a wife named Jennifer. He’s a fan of Notre Dame football. He also enjoys watching boxing. Some of his favorite TV shows include classics such as “The Wire,” “The Sopranos” and “The West Wing.”
Through it all, he hasn’t changed who he is deep down inside.
“That’s the thing that I believe most strongly about Sean,” Tauer said, “is that now that he’s a head coach, his sensational quest for knowledge and learning and doing the best possible job that he can, that’s not going to go away. He lives and works in a way every single day that really embodies intrinsic motivation. It’s not doing it because of how much money you make. It’s not doing it for fame.
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“It is who he is and he’s going to keep being the same person.”
Jason Beede can be reached at [email protected]