Interviewed during the second quarter of his team’s game against the New York Knicks, (Otis) Smith said on the TNT broadcast that he had “no reaction, really,” to the morning’s events.

“Coaches and players have been doing this for years, you just happened to see this play out in the public,” Smith said. “To the organization’s credit, Stan Van Gundy is still our coach and Dwight Howard is still our player and we’re still trying to win basketball games.”

Some observers assumed that Van Gundy made the comments, following four straight Magic losses, as a method to force the Magic’s hand so that they would fire him immediately. Smith said that was not the case, and that coach, player and organization would make things work for the duration of the 2011-2012 season, despite the obvious awkwardness.

“It will have to work out the remainder of the season,” he said. “And we’ll see where both of it is at the end of the season. It just happened to play out in the media, it probably shouldn’t have played out in the media, but it did, so we are where we are.”

via Ben Golliver of CBS Sports