Bullets Forever: Like Getting the Washington Post Early
Pradamaster, 11/11/08:
Michael Wilbon, 11/12/08:
Different paths; same destination.
Calls to fire Eddie Jordan are fashionable these days, and with good reason. The Wizards' three-point defense has gotten worse every year. The Princeton offense is sputtering, since there is no Gilbert Arenas to break it or Brendan Haywood to bounce bodies around in the middle. The team's prized youngster, Andray Blatche, is having his worst start as a pro. Rotations have no rhyme or reason. The list goes on.
But there's no reason to fire Eddie Jordan for a little while. The reason? Historically, firing a coach in the middle of the season hasn't made much of a difference on that season's success, and five games, no matter how bad they were, is too small a sample to determine whether we have no chance at the playoffs. Sure, our 0-5 start probably hurt any chance to gain a high seed, but in theory, you can fire EJ after the season anyway and start a new season with a new coach and a new direction. There's a larger pool to choose from in the offseason, whereas you're basically resigned to promoting your assistant coach if you fire someone in the middle of the season.
Michael Wilbon, 11/12/08:
The dumbest thing the Washington Wizards could do right now is fire Eddie Jordan. Abe Pollin's history of patience with employees he likes -- and he loves this Jordan -- and Ernie Grunfeld's track record of making smart basketball decisions both suggest the Wizards will be too smart to finger Jordan as the primary culprit for the team's wretched start. But being the only winless team in the NBA at 0-5 makes these conversations inevitable.
The Wizards aren't just off to another slow start, like last year when they also went 0-5 but recovered to win six straight. Through five games this season, they are depressingly awful: last in points allowed, at 108.8, and last in opponents' field goal percentage at 50.2. And since the Wizards are averaging only 97.4 points per game themselves, they're losing by an average of 11.4 points per game, the largest margin in the Eastern Conference. These are comical numbers, old ABA numbers from the 1970s.
Different paths; same destination.
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