Howard discussed something else that had become synonymous with his season, and that was the bizarre April 5 shootaround in Orlando when his former coach, Stan Van Gundy, told reporters that Orlando management had informed him that Howard had requested his firing. The video of Howard walking into a scrum of reporters, unaware of what Van Gundy had said, went viral. Ultimately, it became a flashpoint of criticism toward Howard.
When asked if he felt set up, Howard told Yahoo! Sports: “I did. I had no clue about what had happened, about what he had said. I wanted to clear it up that this was not what was happening behind closed doors, and I stepped into something that I didn’t know how to handle. It hurts me to this day, thinking about how people were saying these things about me, calling me, "a coach killer," and all this crazy stuff. It upset me, it hurt a lot.
