You would think that making national headlines once by publicly calling out your franchise player would be enough to get your point across. You would think. Not for Stan Van Gundy, it’s not.
The Magic coach, one day after openly criticizing Dwight Howard, was back at it again following a team practice.
“I think Dwight wants to be a great player. I think Dwight wants to be a winner. But we’re in Year 4 and he hasn’t won a playoff game,” Van Gundy said.
“He may not like it. He may not like the way I did it. But I’ve also done it before many times in private — just he and I. I didn’t think it was making an impact, so now it’s out there for everybody. We’ll see what happens.”
Stan, we get it already.
You want Dwight to rebound better and play a little bit more defense. Relishing the fact that you aired out the dirty laundry between the two of you isn’t going to help matters much. Especially not after Howard graciously accepted the initial criticism and promised to do better.
