Our man Rev has some thoughts on EJ. These are his words.
Imagine a Sixers world without Eddie Jordan. Using Wednesday's Kate Fagan article
citing sources that Eddie Jordan will indeed be relieved of his duties
as head coach of the 76ers as a jumping off point I wanted to take a
moment and look at what we’ll be missing if he is not brought back for
a second season at the helm of our 1, 2, 3, 76ers. As an aside, Fagan and Phil Jasner deserve some sort of recognition
from Amnesty International or something for bravely persevering against
seemingly insurmountable odds and covering this team on a daily basis. Here is what I’ll miss…
1) His
ability to confound opposing coaches by virtue of his substitution
patterns. He makes it impossible for advance scouts to write a report
accurately predicting when he’ll go small, or when he’ll go big, or
when he’ll completely stifle Jrue Holiday’s development by playing Willie Green for 30 minutes one night. How do you prepare for that? How could opposing teams possibly game plan against a coach who shows no discernible reason for sending players into, or pulling players out of, a game? The short answer; you can’t.
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Therein lies the coaching genius of one Edward Montgomery Jordan. Yes, he shares a middle name with Bobby Knight. They both also have a unique ability to draw the wrath of fans. Unfortunately, in Jordan’s case that anger belongs to the home fans. Anyhow, paraphrasing noted philosopher Mike Tyson – Eddie Jordan’s coaching acumen and strategery can be summed up thusly: “His style is impetuous. His defense is impregnable, his logic is just ferocious.”
2) I’ll miss his post-game verbal gymnastic sessions with the beat reporters where he explains how despite his brilliant coaching maneuvers everything went wrong that particular night. His ability to rationalize and justify his coaching decisions is amazing. Seriously, he
is an incredibly skilled orator. He has an unbelievable ability to
string enough basketball related words together in a completely
nonsensical manner so as to temporarily render his questioner silent.
Fact – if time travel were possible and you were able to drop Eddie
Jordan smack in the middle of the Lincoln-Douglas debates E.J. would so
confound his opponents with his rhetoric he’d emerge victorious. He missed his calling. He should have been a White House press secretary not an NBA head coach.
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3) Lastly, I’ll miss his total and utter disregard for defense. Jordan has done the Sixers proud by carrying on their tradition of being wholly incapable of defending the 3-point shot. Percentage-wise the 76ers have the worst three-point defense in the NBA. It’s not even close. Opponents are shooting .401 from against them from behind the arc. The next worst is Minnesota, who gives up .368 on threes.
I suppose when you are running the Princeton offense you cannot be
bothered to focus on the defensive side of things. It’s not like
stopping your opponent from scoring is a sound way to go about winning basketball games. Fundamentals be damned.
These
are just a few of the things I’ll miss about him if and when he’s gone.
But do not feel too bad for the guy. He has three years and around $9
million left on his contract. He’ll be just fine.
Although perhaps a bit premature I encourage you to please feel free to share what you’ll miss about Eddie Jordan in the comments.