Magic's Van Gundy the perfect model of hoops coach

Van Gundy's rise to NBA stardom is truly storybook stuff

Stan Van Gundy and his brother, Jeff, love the game, taking after their father, Bill

8:54 PM EST, February 12, 2010

The Orlando Magic and New Orleans Hornets are 40 minutes away from tip-off at Amway Arena. While his son, Stan Van Gundy, is poring over his game-plan in his office below, Bill Van Gundy is up above, pacing the concourse.

Well, not so much pacing as walking off nervous energy.

Before every Magic home game, his gut churning, Stan's white-haired, wiry father heads to the concourse and walks. And walks. And walks.

"Nerves, I guess," Bill says. "Sometimes after games, too."

"Oh, he's a wreck," laughs Cindy Van Gundy, Bill's wife and Stan's mom.

Bill still feels the tug more than a decade after coaching his last game, hanging on every win and loss. It's like somebody who lost an appendage and still feels pain in the missing limb.

Now you know why Stan is a ball of fists on the Magic's bench and his gut churns every game. It's in his DNA.

Sunday's NBA All-Star Game in Dallas will be the only time the Van Gundy family will be able to halfway relax this season.

Stan will be coaching the Eastern Conference all-stars. Frankly, with apologies to Commissioner David Stern, the gig doesn't exactly thrill him.

It's not a real game, you see. Doesn't matter who wins.

Growing up Van Gundy, this is a foreign concept. It goes against everything ingrained in you by a competition junkie (Dad) and a perfectionist (Mom).

Van Gundy 101: If there's a court, a ball and enough guys to run a pick-and-roll, well, you figure out how to do it right and beat the other guys. Anything else is basketball blaspheme.

And no quote captures the Van Gundys more than one uttered by various coaches: "There's winning and there's misery."

Everyone in Orlando has watched Stan suffer on the bench. His Dad was an intense, tortured soul, too, although recently he said, "If I had a regret, I wish I had enjoyed winning more."

There was always the next game. Stan conceded he loses perspective at times. The other day, he was reminded of his luck by Pat Williams, a terminally upbeat soul in an ever-present Hawaiian shirt. Williams, a Magic VP and former general manager, congratulated Stan on being named an all-star coach.

"I said, 'Yeah, Pat, I'd think I'd rather have the rest, though.' Pat said, 'Hey, come on, babe. You were at SUNY-Brockport [College], bopping around there, wondering about coaching these level of guys one day. Come on now, you can forgo a little sleep.'

"Pat's perspective was correct, as it usually is," Stan said. "For me, and where I come from, it's pretty phenomenal."

Stan played for his Dad at SUNY-Brockport and then coached basketball part-time and lined baseball fields as an equipment manager at Castleton (VT) State for $1,500 a year. He thought he'd remain a lifetime high school or small-college head coach (as his father did for 40 years) until landing the University of Wisconsin job in1994.

Then the Badgers fired him, severing his coaching umbilical cord. Stan could hear his father's two rules in his head: 1) if you want to be loved, don't coach; 2) save your packing boxes (for your next move).

How Stan wound up in the NBA is storybook stuff.

His brother, Jeff, was a successful high school coach in Rochester, N.Y. One day, Stu Jackson, then an assistant at Providence under Rick Pitino, came to recruit a player and witnessed one of Jeff's practices. Jackson recommended him to Providence coach Rick Pitino, who hired him.

Small world? It gets tinier. Jackson became the New York Knicks coach in 1989 and hired Jeff Van Gundy as an assistant. Jeff was promoted to Knicks' head coach in 1996, taking over for Don Nelson, who replaced Pat Riley. Riley had moved on to coach the Miami Heat.

The tale gets better. When Riley was looking for an assistant, he was told by Jeff there was this other Van Gundy available.

Riley hired Stan before the 1995-96 season, and Stan replaced Riley as Heat head coach in 2003. He coached the East all-stars in 2005.

"I had to get very lucky. Turned out I had the good fortune of being fired by Wisconsin," Stan laughed. "So my biggest break came when my brother got to know Stu Jackson, who was looking at one of his players. It's crazy.

"I would have been very happy if I remained a small-college coach my entire life and that's what I planned to be. I never thought for one second I'd be coaching at this level."

The Van Gundy boys likely were destined to coach, being around their father and mother, a Hoosier who also knew her basketball. They once took a vacation at the Final Four.

"My Dad has such a passion for it. You're around somebody every day that loves what they're doing, it rubs off," Stan said. "That's what made it natural for my brother and me."

They already knew zone defense from man. So it was perfectly natural what happened when Bill needed surgery to remove a brain tumor on Pearl Harbor Day. His young sons — Stan was in seventh grade and Jeff in fourth —scouted the next opponent and filed a report for their recovering father.

"My Dad's still hyped up. It's still all about basketball, but now there's no release," Stan said. "He's nervous. He wants it to go well."

The Van Gundys simply are trying to keep up a winning pace.

Howard demands less for himself to make Magic better

By Shaun Powell – NBA.com – March 31, 2010

Dwight Howard says the Magic are better off without the selfish and self-serving player who thankfully left the team last summer, and we know what you're thinking: Does he really hold such a low opinion of Hedo Turkoglu?

Well, actually, Howard was speak about himself. His old self.

"Last year and the year before, I would get upset if I didn't get a number of shots, or if I didn't score the way I wanted to, the way I knew I could," he said recently in a candid moment. "That's not me anymore. That person is gone. Now I understand."

Normally jovial and kid-like, with the personality of a Nickelodeon host, Howard would sometimes simmer whenever he was ignored offensively. He'd point an accusatory finger at Stan Van Gundy and question the coach's strategy. He'd bark at teammates if the Magic went a few trips down the floor without giving him a touch. Howard never threw a fit or caused a major disruption; he's not that extreme. But he never hid his annoyance.

That's all changed, with the epiphany coming soon after Orlando was chopped down by the Lakers in the NBA Finals. He saw Kobe Bryant, a me-first player himself once, share the ball and ultimately lift the trophy. He took stock of himself and his teammates. And he knew Vince Carter was coming aboard.

Maybe the problem, Howard concluded, wasn't the players surrounding him.

"I've matured," he said. "I still have to dominate on defense and the boards but on offense I have to trust them. If I get my teammates involved, it'll only make us a more dangerous team."

There were games this season in which Howard took only a spoonful of shots and he dealt with it. He's still the club's leading scorer, but that's due to 60 percent shooting. He's taking only 10 shots a game and often is the fourth option. But he can live with it as long as Orlando wins.

"Teams will have to pick their poison now," Howard said, rather gleefully. "If they want to keep double-teaming me then we'll knock down the shots. If they don't double, we'll pound it in the post. We feel confident either way."

Ever since he arrived as the No. 1 overall pick in 2004, Howard has taken great pride in being the face of the franchise. That's not unusual for a young player with his talent. His personality takes over the locker room. Otis Smith, the general manager, even admitted to taking that into consideration before weighing whether to trade for Carter. There's only room for one strong personality, or at least that's what Orlando thought.

But Howard says he's OK with Carter assuming the largest share of the offense, and in fact, adds he wouldn't have it any other way.

"A guy like Vince needs attempts," Howard said. "We all understand we've got to sacrifice for him. And we have. People are wondering why (my) numbers are down but we're just being efficient. That's what makes a great team."

Howard recalled a conversation last summer with Dikembe Mutombo, who had strong words, saying Howard was letting his talent go to waste. It was an eye-opener for Howard, a two-time All-NBA player and clearly the league's best low-post defensive stopper. But Mutombo kept wagging a finger.

"He said I should be the best player every year until I got old," Howard said. "He said I had to challenge myself more to become the best player. He wanted me to take advantage of all the things I have now, the ability to move around in the paint and my athletic ability. 'You don't want to wait until you get older; do it while you're young.' That's what he said, to dedicate myself more as a player.

"It was a great talk, and I've always admired Dikembe as a player, both what what he did on the floor and off. We still talk a lot and he's been an inspiration to me. I listened and decided I wasn't going to waste my talent. Everything he said was right."

And so the "new" Howard is determined to do what the old player didn't: win a championship, start a legacy and possibly a dynasty. Problem is, LeBron James has the same idea. And Kobe. And so on.

"Well," Howard said, "whatever's meant to happen will happen. But if we go out there wanting to win, then we're going to win. Nobody's stopping us. When we play determined and together, nobody's going to beat us. It doesn't matter who we play and who's in our way."

Obviously, it'll take more than Howard to bring a ring of truth to that for Orlando. Carter must shoot a higher percentage. Rashard Lewis often disappears, same for Jameer Nelson. But the last two months, they've found a rhythm, and just in time, with the playoffs weeks away.

"I'll be a different player in the playoffs," Howard said. "A better one."