The Magic have their head coach in former Spurs assistant Jacque Vaughn – now it’s on to the small matter of figuring out what to do with Dwight Howard. Here’s the latest from around the Association..
- While some outsiders might be surprised to see Vaughn get the head coaching job in Orlando over more high-profile candidates, the Spurs saw this coming, writes Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News. “Jacque Vaughn is a star,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said upon hiring Vaughn two summers ago. “You can see the same qualities in him that you saw in Avery [Johnson].”
- Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel doesn’t think that the Heat have to rush into adding a big man as it is July and there are still plenty of centers available.
- LeBron James had high praise for Pistons forward Jonas Jerebko and called him a “shining star,” writes Brian Manzullo of the Detroit Free Press. Jerebko inked a four-year, $18MM deal with Detroit prior to the start of the 2011/12 season.
- As far as Alonzo Mourning is concerned, the original Dream Team is the best USA basketball team ever assembled, Winderman writes. The former center believes that the second-best squad assembled is the 1994 USA team (also known as “Dream Team II”) which featured Mourning in the middle.