Magic center Dwight Howard met with coach Stan Van Gundy recently to discuss his negativity.

"I think, as a team, there was a lot of negativity and it's not like Stan's a negative guy," Howard admitted to the Orlando Sentinel. "But it's like there's always some clashes and focusing so much on our mistakes. Instead of bringing each other down, we have to pull each other up.

"That's the only thing I wanted from coach."

Van Gundy concurred, saying that his negativity was "draining the enthusiasm" from his team.

The meeting occurred sometime prior to Orlando's Wednesday morning shootaround.

"Dwight brought it up," Van Gundy said. "He thought there was too much negativity. A lot of times you hear things from players, it's their perspective and you understand it and sometimes you don't agree with it.

"But Dwight was right in that... there's a difference between correcting and teaching and just seeing everything was bad. You've seen my press conferences. It was all negative. I think that was affecting our team, so...

"I'm making a conscious effort now to sort of change that approach. I think our team needs a great high level of enthusiasm and energy to play. I got to balance being real demanding and not being as negative.

"You can be demanding, saying, 'Hey, that's not right. Let's do it again, without sort of 'What the heck are we doing? We suck!'... I get to that point."

The Magic are 9-3 this season.