The Wizards finally have a new coach [Archive]

Zen-like Todd

June-18th-2003, 05:39 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10503-2003Jun18.html

By Steve Wyche
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 18, 2003; 6:10 PM

Eddie Jordan, a Washington native who played at Carroll High School, will be named head coach of the Washington Wizards Thursday, league sources confirmed. Jordan, who has spent the past four seasons as the lead assistant coach with the New Jersey Nets, accepted the position today after interviewing with team owner Abe Pollin and president Sudan O'Malley.

Sources said Jordan agreed to a four-year deal, but financial terms were unavailable. Pollin, O'Malley and Jordan could not be reached for comment.

By landing Jordan, the Wizards fill a major organizational void, left vacant when Pollin fired Doug Collins in late May. Washington also must hire a president of basketball operations, but Jordan felt comfortable enough with Pollin's proposal to accept the job without having his direct supervisor in place.

Jordan had been courted not only by the Wizards but also by the Philadelphia 76ers. He interviewed with the 76ers Tuesday but was not offered the job. The Nets let Jordan know they would do whatever they could to keep him as Byron Scott's top assistant -- one source said an overture of making Jordan the highest paid assistant in the league was discussed -- but Jordan's desire to be a head coach again made that a mute point.

Jordan coached the Sacramento Kings for the final 15 games of the 1996-97 season and the entire 1998-1998 season after spending five years as an assistant with the Kings. Jordan then left Sacramento for New Jersey.

Pollin, spurned by former Philadelphia Coach Larry Brown and ex-New York Knicks Coach Jeff Van Gundy, targeted Jordan after several strong recommendations from league officials. Over the past week, he began pursuit of the coach many in the NBA credit for establishing the Princeton-style, ball-movement offense in New Jersey and the development of power forward Kenyon Martin.

Pollin waited until the Nets finished the NBA championship series with the San Antonio Spurs -- the Nets lost four games to two -- before setting an interview with Jordan.

Pollin escorted Jordan around the team's MCI Center facilities today, had him meet with some of the existing staff and the two watched some of the workout of Georgia small forward Jarvis Hayes, a potential draft pick by the Wizards, who hold the No. 10 selection.

Fitz

June-18th-2003, 10:24 PM

Although Pollin et al have made it awfully hard to care about the Wizards, I'll go on record early as liking the Eddie Jordan hire. It may be the first sign of intelligent life at MCI Center that's been seen in quite some time.

Here's Tony K's take on the matter. He even sneaks in a couple of Skins references :)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11066-2003Jun18.html

Here Comes Mr. Jordan -- Again

By Tony Kornheiser
Thursday, June 19, 2003; Page D01

So it's Eddie Jordan, huh? What's that about? Are they already having second thoughts about canning Michael Jordan? And suppose Eddie had turned them down, where would they have gone next? Vernon Jordan? Brian Jordan? Queen Noor of Jordan?

What's the motivation here? Did the Wizards manufacture so many of those throwback Bullets jerseys with the name "Jordan" on them, they saw this as the only way to unload them?

Okay, he's not Larry Brown. And he's not Jeff Van Gundy. The Wizards tried for them knowing they would have had fans jumping up and down. The problem was Brown and Van Gundy would have had to be sedated to come here. (Rick Carlisle was out of the question. You can't hire a coach who didn't get along with the players after you just fired a coach for not getting along with the players.)

What should we think about Eddie Jordan?

Well, he's got local ties, which is always good. He graduated from Archbishop Carroll. Maybe he can go door-to-door to his old classmates and try to sell them 10-game packages. La Sooz would love that.
He's had great success as an assistant at New Jersey. He was on the "Hot List." The Nets went to back-to-back NBA Finals, and a bunch of folks said Eddie Jordan was doing their Xs and Os, not Byron Scott. We know Jordan talked with the 76ers about their vacancy, so this isn't one of those typically scary Boulez situations where the Wizards are the only team interested in the guy. (Does this mean Jordan didn't want to coach Allen Iverson? So Iverson's the one guy in America who can make the Wizards' job look good?)

On the other hand this is a second chance at being a head coach for Eddie Jordan. And the first chance was a disaster. Jordan was 33-64 in a little more than one season at Sacramento. To be fair, Jordan didn't have much to work with. In those days Sacramento was lovingly referred to as "Bullets West."

Back then Mitch Richmond was Jordan's best player, maybe his only one. Corliss Williamson, Otis Thorpe, Bobby Hurley and Billy Owens weren't exactly Reed, Frazier, Monroe and DeBusschere. After Jordan was dismissed, the very next season Rick Adelman coached Sacramento to the playoffs. But by then the Kings had Chris Webber and Vlade Divac. (Chris Webber. Hmmmm. Name sort of rings a bell, but I can't quite place it.)

So how could we spin this to make Jordan appear more attractive?
Oh, I've got it. Jordan coached Sacramento, so he's seen bad. He knows bad. He's perfect. He'll feel right at home here.

As for getting a second chance with the Wizards, are you kidding me? Right here is the Official Home of Second Chance. Gar Heard, Jim Lynam, Darrell Walker, Bernie Bickerstaff. How far back do you want me to go? If Jordan had turned them down, I wouldn't have been surprised if Abe put in a call to Dick Motta. It seems the only person the Wizards didn't give a second chance to is Michael Jordan.

I am a bit surprised that the Wizards hired a coach before they hired a general manager. I was under the impression Abe Pollin said he intended to find "the best basketball mind out there," and let him hire a coach. But maybe Pollin just felt pressure to hire somebody. Because in all the stories I've read lately about how players are being worked out in preparation for the upcoming draft, there are full paragraphs devoted to Wizards assistant coaches and Wizards front office people that carry this proviso: "who may not be with the team next season." It was beginning to look like the Wizards were paddling in circles.

I think there's a lot to like in Eddie Jordan, who I recall covering back to his days at Rutgers, when his team -- with Phil Sellers and Mike Dabney -- stayed undefeated all the way to the Final Four. His work with the Nets got good reviews. He knows the Eastern Conference. And if it wasn't for a second chance Chuck Daly would never have gotten to Detroit, and Jerry Sloan would never have gotten to Utah. (As long as we're on the subject, if not for a third chance George Karl would never have gotten to Seattle. And let's not talk about Milwaukee, okay?)

As I was writing this some of my colleagues at The Post said that Eddie Jordan was a typical bland hire by the Wizards, who wouldn't sell any tickets. And it's true that Larry Brown would have sold tickets. But it's a desperate team that hires a coach simply to sell tickets. It's how you wind up with Jerry Tarkanian on an NBA bench.

Don't get me wrong, I recognize the Wizards are desperate. Or should be. But hiring Michael Jordan was a move born out of desperation, and it backfired. Maybe this time the Wizards are wiser to dial it down. Anyway, after the first 30 games it's the team that draws or doesn't draw the fans -- not the coach. If it's a typical Boulez start of 9-20 it wouldn't matter if Tom Cruise was the coach.

Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic, but I think the Wizards job is a good one. Sadly, what makes this job look good right now is what has made the situation here look bad for so long: The bar is set so low that if you win 35 games, they'll carry you around on a chair. Make the playoffs and you can own the building. (I feel the same way about the Cincinnati Bengals job, and told Marvin Lewis when he took it, "Hey, you win seven games with the Bengals, you're Vince Lombardi.")

The problem is that .500 has become the gold standard here. No matter what management says, it's not really about winning a championship, it's about not losing 50 games. My colleagues who scoffed at hiring Eddie Jordan said, "Would the Washington Redskins settle for hiring an assistant coach without any name recognition?" Not now they wouldn't. They went for the big splash, first with Marty Schottenheimer, next with Steve Spurrier. But once upon a time Joe Gibbs was a hire much closer to Eddie Jordan than to Michael Jordan.

If Eddie Jordan can get good young talent like Kwame Brown, Jared Jeffries, Juan Dixon and Larry Hughes to play hard and play well, and if he can find a point guard and also persuade Jerry Stackhouse to stay (and lead the league in scoring, if I'm not asking too much, huh?), maybe he'll prove to be the right man for the job. I know I end a lot of Wizards columns in this same stupidly optimistic way. But you have to crawl before you can walk. And anybody who's been here the last 20 years has his knees permanently scuffed.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company