Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy made quite a bit of noise on Thursday, when he went public with his knowledge that Dwight Howard asked the team to fire him. This information came right from the top of the organization, Van Gundy said, so there must be some truth to it, right?
Not so much, according to Magic GM Otis Smith.
In an interview before Orlando’s 88-82 win over the Sixers on Saturday, Smith told ESPN’s Lisa Salters that it didn’t happen. Well, sort of.“He never asked me; I didn’t have that knowledge,” Smith said.
Van Gundy said Thursday he knew Howard, the Magic’s franchise player, had asked that he be fired. Smith said both parties were to blame for the public dispute.
“If he did ask he’s wrong, and for Stan to address it in public, that is wrong,” Smith said.
I have no idea why Smith continues to give interviews during nationally televised games on this subject; maybe he just likes the attention. He’s the only one, with the rest of us having tired of the drama that’s gone on in Orlando almost daily since the very beginning of the season.
You see the loophole here, right? Smith says Howard didn’t ask *him* to fire Van Gundy. That doesn’t mean Howard didn’t go over Smith’s head at some point and speak with ownership, or that Howard’s agent or someone else close to him didn’t make his wishes clear.
(And as an aside -- of course Howard asked the Magic to fire Van Gundy. Just watch that video from Thursday; he couldn’t possibly look more disingenuous.)
Round and round we go, with the only thing certain in Orlando being the fact that Howard and Van Gundy must co-exist for the remainder of this season, and through whatever brief run into the postseason Orlando is able to make with all of this turmoil continuing to swirl.
If it feels like we’re going in circles with this story, it’s because the information out of Orlando lately has been nothing short of dizzying.