Now that Ed Stefanski has admitted his mistake in hiring his good friend Eddie Jordan to be head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, we have to ask what can we learn from Stefanski’s disastrous decision to hire one of his friends.
First of all we’ve learned that you should make sure you hire somebody who can do the job.¬† Don’t hire a friend unless he can do the job or you’re going to wind up firing him and eventually that’s going to lead to you being fired.
This was a bad hire from the start.¬† Jordan was a proponent of the “Princeton” offense and that slow half court offense didn’t fit the talent on the basketball team.
One of Jordan’s former players, Gilbert Arenas, who hasn’t made too many good decisions of late, was right when he said the Sixers didn’t have the shooters and passers to succeed in the offense.
A blind man could see that the Sixers were at their best when they were pushing the ball up the floor and outrunning their opponents.¬† Any time they willingly played half-court basketball, they were doing their opponents’ a favor.
The truth of the matter is that the Sixers shouldn’t be only firing Jordan, they should be firing Stefanski as well.
Something is wrong with his perception of the game because he wasn’t able to see that Jordan and the talent on his team wasn’t a good fit.
The Sixers have quite a few athletes on the team but they don’t have many quality shooters or passers. Utilizing an offense that emphasized passing and outside shooting made no sense at all.
That’s why the next coach of the team should be somebody who emphasizes playing hard and tough on defense every time the other team brings the ball down the floor.¬† He should demand that Andre Iguodala work on making the All-NBA defense team.
He’s got the physical skills and the intelligence to do it, but he should be forced to emphasize his defensive play.
They’re athletic enough to be a good defensive team.¬† Their offense should be generated by their defense.¬† Every time they get a rebound or a steal, they should try to push the ball.
I do think they have found themselves a quality young point guard in Jrue Holliday and I love the way this young man plays defense.  The rest of the guys should be just as eager to play defense as this young man appears to be.
I’m eager to see who Stefanski chooses as the team’s next coach, but I’m not very hopeful based on the awful job he did of choosing the last one.
I’ll leave you with this.¬† If he misses again, he shouldn’t get the chance to fire him.
Who do you think should be the next head coach?  Larry Brown?  Mark Jackson?  Avery Johnson?
Man I wish I was Eddie Jordan. Dude is getting paid for nothing. I wish I could get paid millions of dollars for sucking at my job.
I’d take Jeff Van Gundy. At least we know they’ll play defense. I don’t ever want to see Iguodala shoot another jump shot. Every shot from him should be him running towards the court. He’s too athletic not to be attacking the court on every possesion.
No Mark Jackson. I want a proven coach. Shoot bring Mo Cheeks back. This team had too much talent to be as bad as it was. You get a good coach in here the team is 6th seed at worst. The issue is that you’re still not gonig to win anything. But with good coaching from someone with a defensive mentality and will let the athletes do what they do will take the Sixers a lot further.
I actually wouldn’t mind seeing what Avery Johnson would do with this team. The Mavericks fell off a steep cliff after his departure.
Avery Johnson? Jeff Van Gundy? Those guys are jokes. How can you say the Mavericks fell off when they are tearing up the west coast as we speak. Im saying they should push hard for Coach K. FOOK DOOK. Im tired of seeing the blue devils win. Coach K has shown that he can work with NBA caliber players because he did coach the USA team and correct me if i’m wrong, he won a gold medal right? Special K has what it takes, even though he coaches DOOK.