Jordan given a DCM

[Dingster]

Polin gave Jordan the a$$ from Washington citing that the Bullets underachieved, players and staff bickering and the need to change direction. Jordan apparantly didn`t see it coming and issued a statement saying how ****ed off he is. Don`t know how true that is if he`s being speaking to the new Charlotte expansion group. Sounds like a lot has been going on off the ball in the capital city.

 

[Iverson]

The Wizards should be thankful. Without Jordans presence the wiz wouldn't have soldout for 2 straight seasons.

Just looking at the stats, this season the Wiz attracted 1,618,854 people to all their games - thats a 98.7% capacity rating. The next closest is from the sixers with 1,561,842.

 

[jod23]

Originally posted by Iverson
The Wizards should be thankful. Without Jordans presence the wiz wouldn't have soldout for 2 straight seasons.

Just looking at the stats, this season the Wiz attracted 1,618,854 people to all their games - thats a 98.7% capacity rating. The next closest is from the sixers with 1,561,842.

The Wizards sold out all 82 home games in Jordans two years at the club. They also sold out stadiums on the road and had the highest average crowd per game for both seasons Jordan played.

Dont know if it was an amicable split as Im hearing all sorts of stuff from ESPN.com, NBA.com, Sportscenter....just different reports coming from all over the place. Bottom line is though that Jordan wont be the GM of the Washington Wizards next season.

I heard Jordan left but if Pollin dumped Jordan then he's an idiot. Ive also heard rumors that now Jordan could be going back to Chicago to work with Paxon??

 

[naughty monkey]

Originally posted by jod23
...
I heard Jordan left but if Pollin dumped Jordan then he's an idiot. Ive also heard rumors that now Jordan could be going back to Chicago to work with Paxon??

old news...
naughty monkey blowing a trumpet - his own

 

[jod23]

Originally posted by naughty monkey
old news...
naughty monkey blowing a trumpet - his own

All that was providing he stayed at Washington...ah well. Notice nobody answered my last post in that thread?? That's because I was on the money so everybody just pretended like they didnt read it.

Anyways here is a good article on Jordan getting dumped by Abe Pollin. Aldridge tells it like it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Honest Abe, follow MJ out the door

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By David Aldridge
Special to ESPN.com


Let me start with disclaimers: I like Abe Pollin. I really do. In a world, and a league, of poseurs and pretenders, people who talk about doing the right thing and then do the expedient, selfish thing, Pollin is almost always on the right side of the argument. As a fellow Washingtonian, I know the numerous good works Pollin had done for the community (and don't know about dozens of others), not because he'd get favorable press, but because he genuinely believes in the idea of being a good neighbor.

Abe Pollin built MCI Center in the middle of Washington, D.C., when most people were going the other way. He built a lot of it with his own money, again, because he didn't want to hold up the District in a time of fiscal crisis. And one of the biggest reasons I like Pollin is the same reason I like Allen Iverson: Both are incredibly, passionately loyal to those who've stuck up for them, and they don't care if other people don't like it. For years, general manager Wes Unseld has been battered by the locals in D.C. for not making the Wizards into contenders. It is safe to say that Unseld would have been fired by just about every other owner in the win-right-now-or-else NBA. But Pollin sticks with him. He's loyal that way. He is a good, decent man who was always pleasant to me when I covered his team on a daily basis.

That is why it is so hard for me to write that it's time for him to exit the stage.

This really isn't even about Michael Jordan. It is about Pollin not being big enough to work through a problem that had solutions.

When the New York Times on Sunday accurately detailed the cast-in-stone hard feelings that Pollin had for Jordan, that should have been enough. It was a properly delivered shot across the bow by Pollin (or his people; it doesn't really matter now) that got Jordan's attention: I don't like how you're treating my people. Pollin and Jordan are a lot alike, actually, and that's part of why they clashed. If you're not with them, if you don't drink the Kool Aid, you are summarily cast out of the tribe. In retrospect, it was like asking the Jets and Sharks to build a playground together.

Pollin held the upper hand; he owned the club. He could make demands of Michael Jordan that no one, not Jerry Reinsdorf, not David Stern, could make. He could have insisted that Jordan, if he wanted to return to the Wizards as president of basketball operations, had to make major changes. If he wanted Jordan to move his family to D.C., he could have asked for it. If he wanted Jordan to have lunch with him every day, he could have asked for it. If he wanted Jordan to apologize to others in the organization, he could have asked for that. If he wanted Jordan to grow hair, he could have asked for that.

But Pollin asked for nothing. He just told Jordan to get out.

And that was a colossal mistake.

Because he, not Jerry Krause, will now be remembered as the Man Who Lost Michael Jordan.

Because he repeated a mistake he makes over and over: He didn't allow for the possibility that time could heal wounds. He demanded that the Wizards trade Chris Webber after a terribly disappointing season in which the Wizards, expected to be contenders, didn't even make the playoffs. (Sound familiar?) If he had waited a couple of months, he may have changed his mind, or at least Washington could have gotten a better deal. But Pollin insisted that Webber be moved, now, right now. And so the Wizards got Mitch Richmond and Otis Thorpe, and Webber got $123 million from Sacramento.


Because the Wizards were, simply, horrendous when Jordan came about in 2000. They were old and expensive and boring to watch, and they were losers. In two years -- amazing how people forget this -- Jordan moved Juwan Howard, and Rod Strickland, and Richmond, and Lorenzo Williams, and Tracy Murray, the whole, expensive bunch of them. He brought in young players who are still cutting their NBA eyeteeth. Most importantly, he began to give shape to a shapeless franchise. He improved the training facilities and he set standards.

Did Jordan make mistakes? Of course, he did. Hiring Leonard Hamilton was an awful call. Time will tell on Kwame Brown, but his first two seasons have not lived up to his first-pick status. Was it a mistake to come back and play? Yes, in the sense that it created resentments among players; no, in the sense that, I believe, it made Jordan appreciate what constitutes a good team even more. Rip Hamilton for Jerry Stackhouse? Not as bad a deal as it appears now, I believe; Hamilton fits in perfectly with what the Pistons want to do, and he's playing with better players than Stackhouse. And Doug Collins, no matter what the players think of him, is a terrific basketball coach. Not the best communicator. But a great coach.

I have no doubt that Jordan, and probably some of Jordan's people, frequently rubbed Pollin's folks the wrong way. There was likely an attitude of city folk toward country folk, a sense that "We're from the big city, rubes; pay attention and you'll learn something." But those aren't offenses that merit the death penalty. They are behaviors that can be modified. These are people, after all, not androids.

Firing Jordan now shows incredible impatience with the building process. At the height of his playing powers, when he was the baddest hooper on the planet, it took Jordan seven years to win a title. He had been in Washington 3½ years -- and, let's be honest, this past season shouldn't even count. The Wizards won 19 games two years ago. They won 37 this season. How is that not "moving in the right direction?"

There is no magic pill for winning, unless you have the first pick when Tim Duncan is available. It takes years. Most of the time, you have to rebuild twice -- once to get rid of the deadweight you inherited, a second time to fine-tune.

The Kings had Webber, Vlade Divac and Peja Stojakovic four years ago. But over the past four years, they've also had to add Mike Bibby, Doug Christie, Bobby Jackson and Keon Clark to become a genuine title contender. Don Nelson came to Dallas in 1997 with only Michael Finley to build around. He added Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki the next year, and has spent the past five years mixing and matching pieces, subtracting a Juwan Howard here, adding a Nick Van Exel there. And the Mavs still are probably going to go out in the second round again.

Because it makes Pollin vulnerable to the charge that he had no interest in allowing Jordan to run his team, only to fill his building as a player. And that is ungrateful. Please don't tell me about the $10 million Jordan's getting in severance; he has that much tucked under a pillow somewhere. When you add up the millions in box office he generated, and the millions he saved Pollin by getting under the luxury tax, and the millions Pollin will get from other teams that went over the luxury tax because he's under the tax, Jordan's probably made Pollin a lot more than $10 million the past three years.


Because it makes Pollin seem insincere when it comes to his oft-repeated mantra that he desperately wants to win another NBA title before he's gone. How do you think titles are won, Abe? They aren't won by nice people who never make demands of anyone. Magic Johnson wasn't nice to his teammates. Neither was Larry Bird. Neither was Isiah Thomas. They won precisely because they were ... well, there's a word I'm thinking of, and it rhymes with grass soles. That's what you have to do if you're going to beat the Kobes and Shaqs of the world. They're assassins. They will cut your heart out and show it to you. They will destroy you if you're not strong enough.

Jordan is, to put it mildly, impossible as a teammate. He will push, and push, and push, nag, cheat, cajole, threaten, bully, curse, do any and everything to players to see if they have what it takes. That's not nice. But he's the one with six rings. Don't you think these players should have been listening to him, not the other way around? And let's cut to the chase here; the Wizards have been nice for two decades and they've gotten their butts kicked.

When you have a disagreement this profound, you go in a room and you close the door. You yell at each other. You cuss. You order in lunch. Maybe you cuss some more. Maybe it takes two hours, maybe it takes a week. But you try to solve the problem. Do you think that Larry Brown and Iverson settle their differences in one 30-minute meeting? Do you think that Brown or Ive have dropped a few F-bombs on one another over the years? But, ultimately, they made up. (This brings me to Ted Leonsis, the Wizards' minority owner. Where the hell is he during all this? He's the one who brought Jordan to D.C., and I'd imagine he understood the value of having Jordan around. Did Leonsis try to act as a peacemaker, try to get these two stubborn, proud men to realize that they're better together than they are apart? Did he say anything, or watch a huge chunk of his investment get in his Mercedes and drive away?)

At the least, Pollin owed Jordan an explanation. He owes the fans of Washington a lot more.

I know Abe Pollin is a proud, proud man. The worst thing you can do is tell him how to run his franchise. Bob Johnson might have had a franchise seven years ago if he'd approached Pollin quietly, negotiated, taken his time, instead of making public threats and blustering. Abe Pollin doesn't react well to bluster, or threats. He's earned the right to run a team he's owned since 1964 his way.

But it's been run into the ground.

It's time to let someone else drive the car.

 

[Dingster]

Good article by Aldridge. Even if Polin was right, and we don`t have the inside info to really know, he made a huge mistake in the way he handled it. MJ will always win the support of the media and that makes whatever Polin wants to do so much harder. He just committed political suicide.

 

[jod23]

Originally posted by Dingster
Good article by Aldridge. Even if Polin was right, and we don`t have the inside info to really know, he made a huge mistake in the way he handled it. MJ will always win the support of the media and that makes whatever Polin wants to do so much harder. He just committed political suicide.

No doubt. Im not really sure what Pollin was thinking. He was always going to be viewed as the bad guy if he decided not to bring Jordan back into the fold but he could have lessened the pain by handling the situation with a little more tact. The way he handled it has made him into the Darth Vader of bad guys. The Wizards will have a lot of empty seats next year out of spite IMO.

The decision to let go Jordan was his to make, a mistake IMO but to handle it the way he did was an even bigger mistake. Jordan will be successful somewhere else, his desire to win wont let him fail. Pollin obviously didnt see it and his Wizards will suffer for it.

Aldridge really does tell it like it is!