Bullets Fire Eddie Jordan

[Spence]

After a miserable 1-10 start, the Washington Wizards have fired Head Coach Eddie Jordan and replaced him with Eddie Tapscott. Eddie Tapscott held the post of Director of Player Development, but he travelled with the team and served as a kind of extra assistant coach. He’ll handle his first practice today starting at 11 AM.

Jordan was in his sixth season with the Wizards and led the team to the playoffs each of the past four. In September, shortly before the start of training camp, the Wizards picked up a one-year option to keep him under contract through the 2009-10 season.
He leaves as the Eastern Conference’s longest-tenured coach and No. 3 in the NBA behind Jerry Sloan of the Utah Jazz and Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs.

It’s hard to argue that a coach deserves to keep his job after his team starts the season with 10 losses in 11 games. On the other hand, Jordan is coaching without his best player and scorer, Gilbert Arenas, and without his best defensive player, Brendan Haywood. Most nights, the only guys in the starting lineup who deserve to be there are PF Antawn Jamison and QF Caron Butler. The rest are either too young [Javale McGee] or just journemen [Dee Brown, Deshawn Stevenson, Juan Dixon].

I’ll have more on this later…