I speak here not to defend Dwight Howard, but to examine his villain turn a bit. While I don’t like the idea of anyone coming to be hated, Howard has blithely stumbled into this one and done so over a longish stretch. His crime is bad PR at the very least. This was not one dumb event like “The Decision,” but a protracted “Indecision” that could have been avoided at several turns.
What I wonder though, is this: Is it okay to get your coach fired? We certainly know thatthe sit-down strike of which Dwight’s accused of is not okay. But much of the Dwight Howard scorn seems based on the idea that he’s ousting Stan Van Gundy, a coach whose team has consistently exceeded expectations. We take this to mean that Stan is excellent at his job (he probably is) and that Howard is foolish for wanting to part ways with a maestro (he could well be).
But according to a Sports Illustrated survey, players don’t like working with Van Gundy. And the key word here is “with.” Because the NBA’s org chart is inverted, top players are more powerful than top coaches. Some of this is because there are just so few great players. Some of this is because said great players can alone assure a playoff berth. And some of this is because the NBA makes extreme bargains out of their elites by restricting salary to three times less than the open market would bear. It’s a confluence of factors that demands Orlando listen to Dwight and vest power in his immense hands.
So there is nothing wrong, in the abstract, with Dwight Howard firing his difficult-to-work-with coach. He’s the boss of Stan Van Gundy, despite our traditional notions of how the coach/player relationship goes. The real issue is that Dwight is waffling and letting his employer twist in the wind while putting his company in a similarly precarious place.
A magical sport world 