Stan Van Gundy Fires Back At Pat Riley

Last week Heat President Pat Riley went on the attack, calling out TNT blabber mouth Charles Barkley, Orlando Magic GM Otis Smith and Coach Stan Van Gundy, for jealous, mean-spirited comments they made directed at his team.  Riley went so far as to accuse Barkley of making “personal attacks” and insinuated that both Smith and Van Gundy, were two of the biggest hypocrite’s he had ever seen.

Van Gundy apparently isn’t holding his tongue either. In an interview with the Magic’s official website, Van Gundy responds to Riley’s response to him, and kinda sorta goes in on him.

Check out what Van Gundy had to say about Riley after the jump…

“I thought it was pretty typical. I was kind of amused by it, especially reading down through the interview,’’ Van Gundy said. “He goes into Charles Barkley, me and Otis and then says he doesn’t worry about what people say. Wait, you called the press conference, you went off and everybody and you don’t care what people say? Clearly, he cares a great deal about what people say. I was laughing when I saw that.’’

“Pat’s thing calling Otis’ remarks stupid, I don’t think they were any different than what several ex-players who played when Otis did had to say. They looked at the game differently back then and backed up what we said,’’ Van Gundy said. “The position LeBron and Bosh took isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s different from what (Michael) Jordan, Magic (Johnson) and Larry Bird would have done. Otis was a part of that generation – he wasn’t at that level – but that’s the way those players looked at (James and Bosh going to Miami). Those (former players) wouldn’t have tried to team up. So what Otis said wasn’t a stupid remark. Unless of course you have a different opinion than Pat, then apparently it’s stupid.’’

“Pat getting onto people for making moral judgments made me laugh,’’ Van Gundy continued. “I was with Pat when we had all of those Knicks series and he had no problem making moral judgments on my brother. What I read into that was that I guess Pat is the only one allowed to make those moral judgments and the rest of us can’t do that. I guess we didn’t realize that Pat’s the only allowed to do that.’’

Nice Van Gundy!