It looks like everyone is going to have to deal with each other through the end of the season in Orlando. But you can bet changes are coming this summer.
Thursday coach Stan Van Gundy said Dwight Howard had gone to management and asked that he be fired. After practice Friday Howard told the press that he and coach Stan Van Gundy agreed to keep everything between them, not talk through the media.
Magic coach Van Gundy met with the media for nearly 30 minutes and used his new favorite word “irrelevant” at least a dozen times, according to the Associated Press.
Basically, Van Gundy is going to be the coach and Dwight Howard the coach through the end of the season and however long they last in the playoffs. Which, by the look of their ugly performance Thursday night against the Celtics after this story broke, is not going to be long.
Really, this all falls on the management up the ladder at Orlando. They went to Howard and said, “What do we have to do to keep you?” They virtually begged him. Howard for his part was honest and he has long not been a fan of the negative coaching style of Van Gundy. He said he’d like a new tone, which got translated to getting a new coach but never executed.
At the end of the day, it’s much easier to get a new coach — even a good one like Van Gundy — than it is an elite player. But most likely, after the botched handling of this, Magic management will have neither.