ORLANDO, Fla. — Orlando Magic coach Jamahl Mosley is on the hot seat.

You know it.

I know it.

Most importantly, he knows it.

Orlando Magic coach Jamahl Mosley is on the hot seat.

You know it.

I know it.

Most importantly, he knows it.

Just ask Michael Malone, who won a championship in Denver in 2023 and was fired less than two years later.

Ask Tom Thibodeau, who this season dragged the Knicks — yes, the Knicks — out of the abyss and into their first Eastern Conference finals since VHS tapes were a thing. And was fired after the playoffs.

Ask Mike Budenholzer, who delivered Milwaukee its first championship in half a century, only to be out the door after one playoff disappointment.

Ask Frank Vogel, who guided LeBron James and the Lakers to the 2020 NBA title and was promptly fired two seasons later after Anthony Davis got hurt and the roster imploded.

In this league, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done — it matters what the front office thinks you’ll do next. If they’re not convinced, your fate’s already sealed.

Which brings us to Jamahl Mosley.

By all measures of reason and fairness, Mosley should be in the early chapters of a long and fruitful tenure with the Orlando Magic. He has done everything right. He has taken a franchise once buried in the lottery and instilled identity, accountability, and, most importantly, belief.

He’s the kind of coach who should be safe.

But he isn’t.

Because in the NBA, no coach — with the possible exception of Miami’s Erik Spoelstra and Golden State’s Steve Kerr — is safe.

The Orlando Magic — in case you missed it — are no longer a plucky young upstart. They’ve taken the next step. Or at least, they hope they have.

This summer, the Magic pulled off the kind of moves that make fan bases giddy and coaches nervous.

The Magic just locked in Paolo Banchero to a rookie max extension that could potentially reach $280 million over five years. This comes on the heels of locking in Franz Wagner and Jalen Suggs to lucrative, long-term deals last year. And most notably, the Magic swung big and bold by trading four first-round picks to acquire sharpshooting guard Desmond Bane from the Memphis Grizzlies.

Those are franchise-defining commitments. Those are not the moves of an organization still content on being an up-and-coming young team. This is a franchise that thinks it can contend now even though there’s no tangible proof that they can.

And when that clock starts ticking — fair or not — it ticks directly under the feet and the seat of the head coach.

Don’t get me wrong, ownership and the front office absolutely love Mosley. He is respected within the organization, by his own players and coaches throughout the league.

Want to know what kind of man he is? Go listen to what Team USA players were saying about him a couple of summers ago when Mosley served as an assistant to Kerr. Ask young players who remember him from his developmental work in Dallas, helping turn Luka Dončić into a superstar. Ask players in Orlando’s own locker room.

They’ll tell you about the coach who builds real relationships, who treats players like people, not just assets on a scouting report. They’ll tell you he’s relentlessly positive, but no pushover. That he holds them accountable. That he makes the game simpler, not harder. That he doesn’t chase credit. They’ll tell you he’s everything a modern NBA coach is supposed to be.

Two years ago, he was second in the NBA’s Coach of the Year voting after he unexpectedly led one of the youngest teams in the league to 47 wins before the Magic lost a Game 7 playoff road game to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

More importantly, the team has developed a clear identity — a bruising, defensively stingy, youth-driven team that has made up for its lack of experience with sheer effort and hunger. That identity has Mosley’s fingerprints all over it.

But now this team actually has championship expectations. Those first-round playoff losses of the last two seasons will no longer be tolerated.

Mosley knows this. He’s not naive. This is a league that fired Dwane Casey a year after he won Coach of the Year. A league that dumped Monty Williams just two seasons after he took the Phoenix Suns to their first NBA Finals in nearly 30 years.

“We’ve seen coaches that have been extremely successful get let go and we’ve seen coaches who have not been that successful keep their jobs,” Mosley says. “We’ve seen coaches of the year be let go. That’s part of this profession, and you have to understand it’s not personal. As long as you can look yourself in the mirror at night and say that you’ve done everything in your power to put your guys in the best position to be successful and that you have done right by the game of basketball, then all you can do is let the chips fall where they may.”

It’s no secret that if the Magic underachieve this season — if they slip backward, or if their roster doesn’t click — the heat will rise fast.

Because when a team makes the kind of financial and asset-driven commitment the Magic just made, someone’s going to take the fall if it doesn’t work. Spoiler alert: It won’t be Banchero. It won’t be Wagner. It won’t be Bane.

It’ll be the coach.

So, yes, Mosley is on the hot seat — but not because of any failure. He’s on the hot seat because he’s doing well enough for people to expect more, and in the NBA, that’s the fastest path to scrutiny.

So here’s hoping the Magic rise and thrive next season.

Here’s hoping this franchise gets where it’s trying to go.

And here’s hoping Mosley is still on the sideline when they get there.

He’s earned that chance, but in today’s NBA, nobody is assured of anything.

Not even a good guy and a good coach like Jamahl Mosley.

As we’ve seen time and again in the NBA, yesterday’s miracle worker is too often tomorrow’s scapegoat.

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