The plight of Eddie Jordan

He continued:
"It's leadership, or lack thereof. It's contagious . . . When one guy's miserable, it's contagious throughout the team. You just can't have it. Someone has to stand up and rally the troops, the teammates. The coaches are certainly trying to do it every timeout and every time we get a chance. But it doesn't come from the coaches. "

"We saw the same thing last year during the playoffs. We saw it the first game of the season. It's just a carbon copy. We try to get them with some more spirit and some more positive energy. It's just hard when you don't have that sort of internal leadership."

This isn't the first time that Jordan has claimed something that can't come from the coaches, it's just his latest attempt to deflect the blame.

Does anybody else notice the blatant hypocrisy of a coach lamenting about the lack of positive energy, meanwhile he's criticizing and bashing everyone imaginable to the press, while shifting blame off his shoulders completely?

What exactly has Eddie Jordan, owner of a lifetime 252-352 record and exactly one playoff series win in 9 NBA seasons, done to get the clout to be able to use the media as a motivational tool? What exactly is this negative energy going to accomplish? Why is it that the Sixers effort was never in question in years past, but all of a sudden is?

What value has Eddie Jordan provided this year, exactly? And what has he done above and beyond the call of duty that would give him the security to shift blame off of himself and onto his boss and his team?

How can players learn to accept responsibility when their coach, their mentor, and their boss has repeatedly shown an inability to accept responsibility himself? Perfect guy to have molding your team of young, impressionable kids.

Is there a more deplorable figure in Philadelphia sports at the moment?

Beyond game-day strategy and adjustments, which he has shown to be poor at, some of a coaches primary responsibilities are:

1. Devise and implement a system to get the most out of his talent.
   
2. Develop team chemistry to, again, maximize their talent.
   
3. Further the development of young players.
   
4. Keep players focused, prepared and playing hard.
   

The Princeton offense was a bad idea for the talent on this squad from day one. You knew it, I knew it, everyone but the Ed's (Stefanski and Jordan) knew it. Yet Jordan went along, using training camp, preseason, and the beginning of the season before Allen Iverson was signed in an attempt to implement an offense destined to fail.

Defensive system? That's funny.

Chemistry? He took a team with no chemistry problems in the past -- despite a revolving door of coaches -- and all of a sudden, there's chemistry problems. The catalyst? Eddie Jordan. Between his shuffling of lineups, both in the starting lineup (Brand, Young, Williams) and in changing the lineup after half-time (done to both Brand and Holiday), and his constant jabs aimed mostly at his veteran guys (Iguodala and Brand, primarily), I'm shocked at how well this team has stayed together. By and large, this team has refrained from the constant bickering you would expect from a team as dysfunctional as the Sixers are, which is a testament to the strong character on this team. Don't let Eddie Jordan fool you.

Part of a coaches job IS getting maximum effort out of your players. In today's NBA, and really in all of professional sports, coaches are required to be part-time psychologists and motivators.

By the way, it's worth noting some of the locker room problems in Washington during Eddie Jordan's tenure.

Looking at Young and Speights, it's hard not to say they've regressed. Particularly troublesome is Young, a guy who by all accounts has an outstanding work ethic, and who was always a high energy guy in the past. Finding a young player in Jordan's past he's developed is a hard task to accomplish, and Brendan Haywood and Andray Blatche's increased productivity with Jordan gone only adds to the concern. Young and Speights were players who the Sixers needed to develop, and represents another nail in Eddie Jordan's coffin.

At this point Jrue Holiday's succeeding in spite of him, and I want Jordan gone before he stunts his development. Learning defensive fundamentals from Jordan? Much more likely to pick up bad habits, if Jordan's coaching history indicates anything.

Eddie Jordan was a bad coach before coming here, with a track record of horrible defensive squads. Why he was determined to be the right man for the job, much less the right man with the right system for this personnel, is beyond me. The Sixers are realistically out of the playoff run for this year, even if they're not mathematically eliminated at this stage. Every game Ed Stefanski let's Eddie Jordan walk out onto the court is one too many. I'm not sure if the reason Eddie Jordan is still here is because of budgetary reasons coming down from Comcast, if Ed Stefanski doesn't have the job security to admit a mistake, or if it's because Ed Stefanski and Eddie Jordan are long time friends. I don't care. It's reached the point where this needs to be resolved, and the first step in that resolution is getting rid of "he who can't do wrong".