For Jordan, Future Is Looking Bright

Wizards Coach Eddie Jordan: "We just wanted to win this game in the worst way. . . . We really have confidence that we can be one of the top teams in the East." (Jonathan Newton -- The Washington Post)

Eddie Jordan has too much couth and tact to say he made a great decision two summers ago, leaving his job as the New Jersey Nets' top assistant to take over the Washington Wizards, a franchise in free fall at the time.

So we'll say it for him.

Some crazy gamble, huh? Jordan left a team that 18 months ago came within two wins of an NBA championship for the perceived Clippers of the East. He left for a job Jeff Van Gundy and Larry Brown told owner Abe Pollin they did not want.

Think about the decision. A middle-aged assistant, immune to the criticism of the head coach and in line to take over for Byron Scott, gave up life with Jason Kidd and the Eastern Conference's most athletic, young team for a squad that has not won a playoff series since 1982.

It may be the smartest professional decision he has ever made.

On the day he checked out of a hospital after recovering from a blood clot, the coach returned like a proud papa last night to MCI Center, making it back to the sideline for the New Jersey Nets, his former employers. Before they moved to 8-5 by holding a horrendous Nets club to 68 points, the Wizards already had their first winning November in 20 seasons.

Antawn Jamison was knifing through defenders, telling teammates at one point over the weekend: "Being 12 down is nothing. That's four shots for us."

Kwame Brown, miracle of miracles, checked in with about three minutes left in the first quarter last night. He showed off his wares for 14 minutes before he and New Jersey's Jason Collins were ejected for little more than jawing in the NBA's new zero-tolerance world.

The coach is recovering. The big summer acquisition is living up to his billing on and off the court. And the youngster, if edgy, is at least healthy.

Eight and five in early December? This team finds some interior defense and post-up scoring, and Washington can play with anyone.

Life among the Wizards is encouraging, if not flat-out good.

"We just wanted to win this game in the worst way," Jordan said. "We see how the Eastern Conference is shaping up early this season. We really have confidence that we can be one of the top teams in the East."

Jordan checked out of the hospital yesterday. He ended up there after Wizards trainers examined his swollen left calf on Thanksgiving morning and promptly sent the team's head coach to see a physician.

A blood clot was diagnosed, and Jordan was admitted. Because the hospital did not subscribe to cable television, Jordan listened to back-to-back overtime games on the radio. Allen Iverson stole one game from the Wizards, and Jordan's team came back from 10 points down to beat Toronto in the final minutes on Sunday.

Jordan agreed he may have resembled the detoxing Dennis Hopper character from "Hoosiers," boasting to the nurses about his son's team, his ear next to an old Philco.

"I mentioned that" to the nurses, Jordan said, referring to the movie, "but I wasn't tanked up."

On a more reflective note, he said he missed coaching the last two games. "But you want to live. It was real touchy for about two days."

He came back to face the Nets on one of those reversal-of-fortune evenings. New Jersey is spiraling into the abyss, returning to the lottery. The Nets finally ended a nine-game skid the other night in Charlotte. Kenyon Martin and Kerry Kittles are gone, traded away for draft picks. Bruce Ratner, their relatively new owner, is determined to move the Nets to Brooklyn. He decided to extend the contracts of players Richard Jefferson and Collins, team president Rod Thorn and Coach Lawrence Frank recently. But the commitments came too late. The organization demolished a title-contending roster.

Now, Kidd's body and feelings are hurt, and he is expected to be traded soon after he shows the rest of the league he is healthy. Alonzo Mourning's glowering look on the sideline says it all. One of the great centers of his era did not return from a kidney transplant to play for a good draft pick.

If success in the NBA is indeed a toss of the dice, Eddie Jordan got the better roll.

"I have a crystal ball," he joked before the game. "No, for my career, it was better to get a head job somewhere." He complimented Pollin for his commitment and added, "I thought this was a good team to build with."

Jordan may be the least-known coach of a prominent team in town, after the Capitals' Glen Hanlon. He is not bombastic or belligerent or infamous for anything, which actually hurts your Q rating today. He didn't win any Super Bowls or national championships. His father was not a college coaching legend. About his only local cachet were the years he starred at Archbishop Carroll High School in the early 1970s.

But through the years of relative anonymity -- who but the hoop junkies knew Jordan played on Magic and Kareem's Lakers championship team in 1982 or that he coached at Boston College under Jim O'Brien nearly 20 years ago? -- Jordan learned his trade. He became a meticulous, organized and very good coach.

In Sacramento, where he was an assistant for five years before being let go with little more than a season under his belt, and New Jersey, Jordan's players loved him. He never got enough credit for the Kings' ascent after his departure or for the Nets' success under Scott. After he took the Washington job, it was right to wonder whether he was just one of those wrong-place, wrong-time NBA lifers, unable to land a head coaching job with real upside.

Eighteen months later, he pressed his ear to an old radio from a hospital bed. He then took the prescribed blood thinner so he could make it back for New Jersey last night.

Eddie Jordan came back to a young, talented team suddenly a part of the NBA conversation. He came back to a gamble that paid off.