Inside the Sixers: Jordan should seek solutions, too

Eddie Jordan may have a habit of speaking in riddles, but on Monday night, he made himself quite clear.

The team he coaches - those guys who take the court wearing 76ers uniforms - has no internal leadership, poor spirit, and little fight. This despite pleading and prodding from a beleaguered coaching staff.

The coach's exact words, after a 21-point loss to Orlando:

"It's leadership or lack thereof. . . . One guy's miserable, and it's contagious throughout the team, and we just can't have it."

And there was this damning analysis:

"We lost the passion to compete."

Jordan's frustration actually sounded quite familiar.

Looking through the season's archives - not a fun excursion - reveals a few nearly identical oral rampages.

Although these earlier messages were eerily similar to Monday's, none had the lasting damage of Jordan's most recent attack.

The first quote is from Nov. 13, minutes after the Sixers lost to the Utah Jazz, 112-90, at the Wachovia Center.

"You hope that you learn and you get tired of being pushed around," Jordan said. "If you really have a passion for the game and passion for winning and competing, then you won't get pushed around; you'll learn your lesson. I guess it's still early in the season, or I don't know. I'm from a different neighborhood; I just don't get pushed around. And if I did, I'm responding back. So, hopefully, our guys will respond to that sooner or later."

The second quote is from Nov. 20, minutes after the Sixers lost to the Memphis Grizzles, 102-97, also at home.

"There were two different teams out there tonight," Jordan said. "One sort of rallied around each other, and the other fragmented. That's just being honest, like I like to be. I'm not going to sugar-coat it. We had five individuals on the floor. We didn't rally around each other. . . . It's an old saying: 'If you don't bite as puppies, you're not going to bite as dogs.' And if you didn't rebound as a young man or teenager, you aren't going to rebound when it's time to be a man. We just don't have those type of guys right now."

The third quote is from Jan. 25, minutes after the Sixers lost, 109-98, to the quite-bad Indiana Pacers, again at home.

"We didn't have the energy, we didn't have the enthusiasm, the camaraderie you need to fight back," Jordan said. "If you have that energy and camaraderie, it gives you a little bit more confidence that your teammates are behind you. . . . It's just not . . . it's like non-encouraging, like nothing. You don't coach that sort of thing. It's the people that you have. You have to have that confidence, that sort of swag. It's got to come from [within] a particular person; it's something you don't coach. It's not that they're negative, it's that they don't have the confidence, or the energy, or the wherewithal to give encouragement."

In November and even in January, Jordan's postgame words sounded like a motivational ploy, a challenge to his team to produce better. On Monday night, Jordan's words sounded like an attack on the roster assembled by general manager Ed Stefanski, a confession of failure from a failed coach, and an assigning of blame away from himself. The timing was too late to be some sort of ill-conceived attempt at redirecting his directionless squad.

Jordan's actions - playing the "blame game," as Andre Iguodala said after hearing his coach's remarks - hardly seem like the actions of a leader, either.

Is it true that since the all-star break, the Sixers have looked spineless?

Yes.

But the problem for Jordan is that his players have been blessed with guaranteed contracts, every single dollar counting against the Sixers' salary cap, affecting free-agent signings and financial mobility.

On Monday night, Jordan's words might have been an accurate reflection of the Sixers' recent, and perhaps season-long, problems.

But it seems Jordan's job description should include finding the solution, too.

Read Kate Fagan's 76ers blog, Deep Sixer, at www.philly.com/sixers.

Subject: Calling out the GM.

Posted by: chuckw at 1:30 a.m. March 2.

Jordan [Monday night] sealed his fate by essentially calling out his boss, Edward Stefanski, for putting together this slop, and his call-out was followed by the postgame show when Marshall Harris, Donyell Marshall, and Bruiser Flint all concurred that veteran leadership is lacking - players like Andre Miller, for example. Jordan probably wants out before his diminished reputation is further tarnished and is essentially prodding Stefanski to put him out of his misery. Just who is going to put Sixers fans out of their misery is yet to be determined.