The Osceola Magic will kick off their fourth season at the Silver Spurs Arena in just a couple weeks.
As Hispanic Heritage Month winds down and the NBA G League season gets ready to ramp up, leading the way behind the scenes is one of the Magic’s own — and one of Kissimmee’s own.
Team Vice President Carlos Velez has been with the team in every step since it moved from Lakeland at the start of the 2023-24 season. Velez is a native of Bayamon, Puerto Rico, and came to the Magic’s G League club with over 20 years of experience with the Orlando Magic. It was a natural move for Velez, who’s lived in Kissimmee, by way of Miami, with his family for 15 years.
None of this was in Velez’s plans after graduating from UCF in 1999.
“I went the liberal arts route; I had visions of becoming a diplomat,” said Velez, who got the flavor for international business when he studied abroad in Italy and Spain in college.
Instead, he returned to Central Florida and began work in the advertising industry with the Telemundo Spanish language network. During his time there he helped contribute to the startup of the WTMO Channel 31 live news production.
The Orlando Magic became one of his clients as he provided one of the team’s first Spanish-language advertising bases in the area.
“We helped spearhead their Spanish radio play-by-play broadcasts, and the first year we were extremely successful,” Velez said. “Once Facebook went public, not just a college network, we were one of the first teams to embrace it.”
The move was so successful, he said the team convinced him to join its ticketing and Group Sales team in 2002, at a time when the new Amway Center (now the Kia Center) was taking shape and the franchise was building toward the team on the court that would eventually win the NBA Eastern Conference and go to the 2009 NBA Finals.
“It was a great time, and we still had to work hard,” Velez said. “We couldn’t just magically make the phone ring.”
Despite all the other challenges the following decade delivered—the team “tanked” as it tried to find success in the NBA Draft, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the NBA landscape for multiple years.
“But we persevered,” he said. In July of 2023, when the Magic announced it would bring its G League team to where Velez made his home, he said he jumped at the opportunity to make the Osceola Magic the county’s home team, helped by an NBA brand that plays its games only a half hour away in Orlando.
“My favorite part of being with the club is getting to connect with the community, the same place I live,” Velez said. “We’re all about providing something for families to do together that’s affordable.”
He’ll work with the team’s dedicated staff of 12 to promote another season of Osceola Magic basketball. With a schedule that features just one Friday night game and no Saturday nights, get used to hearing the term “Thirsty Thursday” among some of the other promotions that will include things like themed anniversary nights and food trucks.
“We’re pumped up about the opportunities this season brings,” Velez said. “I’m just blessed to be in one spot, working for this team in this town.”
This team opens this season in this town on Sunday, Nov. 8 at the Silver Spurs Arena against the Oklahoma City Blue.
