Stan Van Gundy really can't catch a break lately.
It's tough enough being known as former Knicks and Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy's Ron Jeremy look-alike brother, but lately Stan has fallen victim to the heat-of-the-moment comments of his star player as well as the fickle media and public opinion.
When the NBA Playoffs started just one month ago, SVG was among the front runners to receive the NBA Coach of the Year Award after guiding the Orlando Magic to a 59-23 record and the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference.
Now, the Magic are set to square off with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals after holding off the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round and defeating the Boston Celtics in the second round.
Sunday's Game 7 victory in Boston was the franchise's greatest accomplishment since the Shaq and Lil' Penny era ended a decade ago.
Despite the copious amount of success Stan and the Magic have enjoyed in the past 30 days, it seems Lil Ron's coaching ability has greatly diminished over the course of this playoff run &ndash at least in the eyes of Dwight Howard and some media members.
After the Magic blew a 14-point fourth-quarter lead to the C's in Game 5 and fell behind 3-2 in the series, Howard was extremely blunt in describing the shortcomings of his coach's game plan.
"I would just say it's tough to win all season when you play inside-out with people who got you off to a good season. I think I'm capable of scoring in the post," Howard said after the loss. "I don't want to say it's all about offense.
"But when you have a dominant player, let him be dominant."
The dominant player Howard was referring to was, of course, himself, and multiple members of the media, such as ESPN's Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon agreed with the 23-year-old center.
SportsCenter has even made it a habit to refer to Stan as "The Master of Panic," a nickname Shaq gave him after Van Gundy correctly and unapologetically called the Big Aristotle a "flopper" after a regular-season game with O'Neal's Suns.
Ironically, the media is using Howard's comments as evidence of said panic even though SVG called out Shaq for flopping against Howard.
Howard, who averaged 20.6 points per game in the regular season, felt as though he didn't get enough touches down the stretch of Game 5 and finished the game with 12 points on 10 field-goal attempts.
Ten shots seems like a drop in the bucket for a "dominant player," but Howard averaged just over 12 field-goal attempts per contest during his 79 regular-season games. If a statistician were to make a graph of his shot attempts, 10 would hardly be an outlier.
A more well-kept secret, however, is that while Howard is perhaps the most dominant rebounder and shot blocker in the NBA today, he is not a dominant offensive player.
He has never averaged as many as 21 points per game over the course of a regular season, and 17 other players averaged more points per contest in 2008-09, including Ben Gordon and David West.
Despite all those facts, Stan Van Gundy found himself under fire for not feeding the ball to a sub-60-percent free-throw shooter at the end of a tight battle.
Though not as beloved by the Magic faithful, forwards Hedo Turkoglu and Rashard Lewis shoot better than 80 percent from the charity stripe and are better options at the end of close games.
"I have to do it defensively where I have to be more aggressive, and offensively I have to get the ball," Dwight said. "I don't think you are going to win a lot of games when your post player only gets 10 shots. It's tough to get yourself going and get a lot of shots without a lot of touches. We have to do a better job with that."
One might argue that you could win at least 67 games with a similar game plan and that SVG made his case for Coach of the Year with a similar game plan.
Honestly, I don't blame Howard for saying the things he did. It was a tough loss, and he felt he wasn't given a fair opportunity to help his team win the game.
I do, however, blame any media and fans who quickly turned on a coach with a proven track record in multiple NBA cities (Orlando and Miami).
Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey recently said on ESPN columnist Bill Simmons' podcast that he, in fact, cast his Coach of the Year ballot for Van Gundy.
In sharp contrast, Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi recently wrote a column saying that the post-game criticism might even affect Stan's job security.
Could you imagine the NBA Coach of the Year being fired had the Celtics been able to defend their home court?
The coaching profession is one with quick turnarounds, knee-jerk hires and fires and brutally fickle job security.
But of course Stan already knows that; he is, of course, the brother of Jeff.
