Magic's Stan Van Gundy Fined for Criticizing Replacement Refs

Written by Maury Brown

Friday, 16 October 2009 23:03

Orlando Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy has been fined $35,000 for publicly criticizing game officials, it was announced today by Stu Jackson, Executive Vice President, Basketball Operations.

Van Gundy was fined for comments he made that appeared on Thursday, October 15 to the Orlando Sun-Sentinel criticizing the NBA replacement referees. Here's the excerpt:

"There’s no problem with them. These are guys the NBA in large part has identified. They’re good, young officials on the way up and one day they’ll be ready. It would be like us having to play with an entire d-league roster. A lot of those guys will be ready to play in three years. if you put one of those guys on an NBA crew they’d probably be all right, but they’re all out there together. It’s like me taking a d-league team and going all right, let’s go play the Hornets. It’s not going to look too good.

"There’s no fault of those guys. As much as we get on our own officials, as coaches, those are the best 60 guys in the world. You’re comparing the replacement guys to them. Well, those are the best 60 guys. I don’t care what profession. When you’re getting compared to the best 60 guys."

Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi pointed out that it's not like coaches could harp on officials more. Van Gundy said that was a good point.

"I would say the one thing it does give you is, as much as we get on our guys, it really gives you an appreciation of how good they are. How hard the job is number one, and how good our guys really are. It’s a tough game to call. And at times they make it look easy. These guys are still struggling to learn.

"I’ve seen some really good ones. A couple of them are going to be very good very quick. Some of the other ones, maybe not."

The Orlando Magic have also been fined $35,000 for Van Gundy’s actions.