Q&A with Stan Van Gundy <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Full text: Q and A with Stan Van Gundy Posted June 17, 2007 Stan Van Gundy leaves today on his first extended road trip for the Orlando Magic. He is scheduled for stops in Miami, Los Angeles, Dallas and Philadelphia, places where he will meet with various players on his roster and potential assistant coaches for his new staff. Earlier this month, Van Gundy became the eighth different head coach in Magic history, spending the previous 12 years in Miami, where he first was an assistant to Pat Riley, then becoming the head coach for two-plus seasons. As a player, he never went beyond the Division III level, but he is well-respected, and well-liked, around the NBA -- a personable family man who comes from a coaching background. His father coached high school and college basketball for 40 years. Younger brother Jeff took the New York Knicks to the NBA Finals in 1999, and he was fired last month by the Houston Rockets after four seasons as their coach. Stan Van Gundy spoke last week with Tim Povtak, NBA writer for the Orlando Sentinel. The following is an edited transcript of that interview: QUESTION: When last season ended, much was made about management here wanting to see a more up-tempo, more free-wheeling team. Can you deliver that? STAN VAN GUNDY: What's pertinent is, 'Can the players deliver that?' I think that the ideal is to give players as much freedom as they can possibly handle. Look at Phoenix with Steve Nash. You can give them incredible freedom because Steve Nash is the best decision-maker in the game. He'll go out and create things. A lot depends on the players. What I plan to do is start with the philosophy of, `Hey let's go. Let's get the ball up and down the floor.' And when the other team misses or we get turnovers, I 'm not going to be standing up calling plays. I never have. We want to go down and play. What happens if that doesn't work? VAN GUNDY: If you can't play like that successfully, then you change. The bottom line is, I don't care what people -- fans, not my bosses -- think they want to see. At the end, what they want to see is a team winning games. My job is to win, and the way to do it here is to be more up-tempo, more aggressive, but that's not an end in itself. That's a means to the end. The goal is to win and nothing else. What was the biggest flaw of the Magic team last year? VAN GUNDY: Obviously they didn't score lot of points. That's reality. You don't look at it and say it was a flaw of the team. It was just an area in which you want to improve. What will a team coached by Stan Van Gundy look like? VAN GUNDY: I hope more than anything, it's a team that people will say, 'Wow, that group competes hard every night -- and plays with great energy and enthusiasm.' I hope it's a team where people are flying around. I hope that's what they see.</div> Read rest here.... http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/bask...?coll=orl-magic
