Jeff Van Gundy defends his brother

Yesterday Jeff Van Gundy appeared on ESPN radio and one of the topics that was discussed was the Magic's handling of Stan Van Gundy's firing.


"As you just said his coaching is beyond approach, so he doesn't need me to defend him. At the same time teams throughout professionals sports they change coaches. Now how you go about it is important. For him to have been in the office all day and the President, Alex Martins, knows that he is there and let them leave and then he calls him on the phone to fire him? It’s unprofessional. It’s unprofessional. To hide behind the fact or try to make everyone believe that Dwight Howard didn't have a part in this is absurd. Say listen we fired this guy because we know this our best chance to keep Dwight Howard. Dwight Howard and I decided to fire him. To do anything else is playing a game of semantics. It really is. Third at the press conference that they hold to be going on and on how difficult of a day it is for you personally Alex Martins to fire people? He does this every time he fires somebody at the Magic with countless disregard at how it impacts people that he just fired. Now my brother is fine financially, but he has uprooted so many other lives that to force…you want sympathy and empathy because you have it hard? Countless disregard for what normal Americans are going through. He’s fired many people there and he always comes up with the same thing that it’s been a tough day on me without any regards for their feelings. Finally and this is the biggest one to me he said that my brother is the finest ‘X and O’ coach he has been around in his 25 years in the business. Okay listen [Alex Martins] all you have done in your 25 years in the business is release press releases and run the business side. You don’t know if a ball is blown up or stuffed. You don’t know if the pick and roll coverage on the side is right or wrong. Just say that I have no knowledge about basketball. It’s offensive when someone who has no knowledge about basketball even in a positive comment tries in those ways to sort of negate what Brian Hill did as a coach or what Matt Guokas did as a coach. He doesn’t know one thing about basketball so please hold off your comments on my brothers expertise since you know nothing about basketball.’”