It's always interesting to wander into the visitors' locker room during the pregame and take measure of the team's attitude toward the game. Stan Van Gundy used to be in charge of "the board" when he was an assistant in Miami under Pat Riley and by the looks of it, he takes pride in doing the same thing as head coach in Orlando.
"The board," as I call it, is the grease board that has all the strategic reminders and keys for the game. In some locker rooms, thanks to some of my media brethren using poor judgment and disseminating some of the information, it is covered up but yesterday Orlando left theirs open for viewing. Nothing earth-shattering and no, I am not going to give away the info on the board but as an educator I was impressed by quality of the information and general overall presentation. Any teacher would have been proud of it.
Van Gundy, who is "always grinding it out as coach" (and loosely translated that means he's always looking for an edge and is sometimes never happy unless he has something to be unhappy about with regard to his team or the game), is a very well prepared coach. He is so demanding of his players that Dwight Howard in particular takes pride in impersonating his coach and poking fun at him. Howard promised me yesterday, Super Bowl Sunday, that he would do his best Van Gundy impression and he delivered a gut-busting rendition of a guy who in these eyes is a front-runner for the NBA's coach of the year.
Some musings from Van Gundy in the pregame included:
- When asked if he believed his team was indeed as good as its 35-10 record, he responded with the idea that in the NBA, regardless of the media or anyone's subjective evaluation you are what your record says you are. So in a word "yes" was his answer. By the way, the Magic now have the NBA's best road record and are a tight 46-20 on the road under Van Gundy
- Not being happy about playing on special days and holidays. He lamented playing on Super Bowl Sunday as the Magic have also had games on Hallowe'en (W @ Memphis by 2), Thanksgiving (W @ Washington by 15), Christmas Day (W by 20 over New Orleans), New Years' Eve (W @ Chicago by 19) and now Super Bowl Sunday (W by 23 @ Toronto). For the record Orlando will play on Good Friday at New York and Easter Monday at Milwaukee. "Thank God the 4th of July is in the middle of the summer or we'd be playing then too," laughed Van Gundy after wondering who he and his team had upset in the league's scheduling office. When I asked him about playing on Father's Day (usually in the midst of the NBA Finals) he changed his tune. "Well that would be great. Now that one I would take, believe me!"
Chris Bosh and Bryan Colangelo were busy putting out fires again in response to ESPN's Steven A. Smith's assertion that Chris Bosh has told the Raptors that he will not be re-signing after his contract expires in 2010.
While many Raptor fans are in the "once bitten, twice shy" category after watching Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter walk away, Bosh has always maintained that he has made no decisions yet. Right now with his track record and what he has shown the city in the past, you have to take Bosh at his word. Hopefully for Toronto fans, a winner can be put on the floor and play well enough to convince Bosh that this is a winning situation going forward and it is a place to be.
On ESPN's dinner-hour Sportscentre, Smith said he stands by his remarks and is not backing down, telling viewers he did speak with Colangelo. That being said, it is still a wait-and-see proposition on how it all concludes.
