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By now, every Sixers follower shares the same sentiment: Eddie Jordan needs to be fired. That's been pretty evident for a while now. It started very early in EJ's tenure when he gave Willie Green all of Jrue Holiday's minutes in training camp. Everyone shrugged it off and attributed it to either a) The myth that Eddie Jordan is old school when it comes to rookies or b) "The Willie Green Spell" that Green seemingly puts every coach or GM under.

("The Spell" involves Willie tricking -- you can interpret the word "tricking" any way you want; use your imagination -- coaches or GMs into thinking he's a component basketball player, when in reality, he's really really bad. ESPN's John Hollinger acknowledges "The Spell" in a chat earlier this year.

"...Willie Green has compromising photos of the Sixers owners. It's the only explanation. Coaches and management changes, but somehow he always ends up with a prominent role in the rotation for no apparent reason. Now they're even using him as the backup point guard."

...Back to Jordan.)

Then it escalated to the famous "I didn't want to damage his psyche," quote after benching Jrue Holiday in a pre-season game against he Knicks, claiming that he didn't want Nate Robinson or Chris Duhon to damage the rookie's psyche. EJ's relationship with Sixer Nation (all 12 of us) was permanently damaged from this day on.

34 games later the Sixers are 10-24. Considering I predicted a 48-win season, you can imagine how surprised and depressed I became with each loss. I even factored in the learning curve for the "Princeton Offense", and expected a slow start. But here's where I messed up. I didn't do my research on Eddie Jordan-coached teams. This is evident in my final paragraph.

"I think the Sixers will be a top 5 team defensively, and the Princeton Offense will allow them to be average on the offensive end."

I still believe this team has "top 5" talent on defense, but according to Basketball Reference they currently rank 27th in the league when it comes to defense. That's down from 14th last year and 8th the year before. The Sixers' roster hasn't changed enough in the past two seasons to warrant that kind of drop off. The biggest difference is Eddie Jordan. It's no coincidence that an Eddie Jordan-coached team has never finished higher than 19th in defense. A simple Googling of "Fire Eddie Jordan" would've better prepared me for this train-wreck season. The first link to come up is a 'Fire Eddie Jordan petition' created in 2007 by -- I assume -- a Washington Wizards fan (Eddie Jordan's last coaching stop). The first time I read the signatures on this petition I nearly wet myself. I had just convinced myself that all of EJ's coaching inadequacies were simply aberrations and would all disappear once he and his team adjusted to each other. Then I read these signatures and it was almost like someone recorded every thought I've ever had during the Eddie Jordan era, put them all in one place, and time-stamped them "2007". Here are the dreaded signatures. Keep in mind, these are real quotes, from real people... in 2007, not 2009.

• "Under his idiotic regime the Wizards have been one of the worst teams in the league defensively and have the absolute lowest basketball IQ."
  
• "I can't even watch this team play any more. between the lack of intensity early in games, the lack of defensive rebounding, the wide open 3s, its just too frustrating."
  
• "This team needs a greater commitment to defense - Eddie has had opportunities to do this, and our defense has only become worse. And I find his favoritism to be completely unprofessional."
  
• "What ridiculous subsitution patterns. Why haven't we seen Blatche in the playoffs, especially given the defensive rebounding difficulties."
  
• "Jordan plays favorites and is a close-minded coach." 
  
• "He's a complete fool when it comes to basketball."
  
• "EJ is a bum. It's time for him to go. He's holding this franchise back.
• "Exceptional as individual talents, mediocre as a team - It could only be the coachs fault."