Wizards fire head coach Eddie Jordan

The Washington Wizards, opening the season with a franchise-worst 1-10 record, fired their head coach Eddie Jordan on Monday after an embarrassing loss to the New York Knicks on Sunday night.

Jordan will be replaced by director of player development, Ed Tapscott for the remainder of the 2008-2009 NBA season. Jordan has been the head coach of the Wizards for the last six seasons and took Washington to the postseason the last four years. He has only been able to advance past the first round once though.

The Wizards were supposed to be looking to improve off of last seasons first round loss to Cleveland with a healthy team, but were hit with the injury bug early. Gilbert Arenas, their franchise guard, underwent his third knee-surgery in the past year and a half and has severely hurt Washington's franchise.
Although Jordan has been a great influence on this team, the franchise needed to go in a different direction, because it may be a few years before they can be competitive again. Caron Butler has not played at the all-star level he did last year, Antwan Jamison is aging, although he just got a new contract this off-season, and Arenas is still injured.

Washington does have some young talent in guard Nick Young, centers JaVale McGee and Oleksiy Pecherov, and forwards Andray Blatche and Dominic McGuire, but their team is a mess right now. The starting point guard against the Knicks on Sunday night, who had a depleted 7 man roster, was journeyman Dee Brown.

After only 11 games, Washington is in a bind, and still does have a chance to make the playoffs, if their team can make some serious changes, but I do not see that happening. Like Gilbert Arenas says, finishing the season without a playoff berth and last place in the league can have its advantages. Hopefully if the Wizards do tank, they can grab a high draft pick and get someone like Oklahoma forward Blake Griffin.

In hindsight though, the Wizards have hurt themselves very much after this past off-season. Resigning Arenas to a near max-contract after several knee surgeries and resigning Jamison as he grows old, completely destroys the cap space.

The combination of Arenas, Jamison, and Butler has resulted in multiple first round exits, and I do not see anything better in the future. Maybe it was in Jordan's favor to get out of such a bad situation.