Wizards' coach Jordan fired

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By Mike Jones

Eddie Jordan began his Monday morning by handing out holiday turkeys to the poor. Before 9 a.m., he was among the unemployed.

The head coach of the Washington Wizards and his wife, Charrisse, stood outside the Verizon Center at 7:30 a.m. to take part in one of the team's community-outreach programs, a typical holiday effort to provide food for the less fortunate.

About 45 minutes later, Jordan was fired by team President Ernie Grunfeld, who cited a need for change in the wake of the Wizards' 1-10 start to the season - a mark that matched the club record set in 1966, when the team was located in Baltimore and known as the Bullets.

Ed Tapscott, the team's director of player development, will replace Jordan for the remainder of the season.

"Our record is 1-10. That's an unacceptable record, obviously," said Grunfeld, who also said he wasn't aware that Jordan was doing community work for the team just before he fired him. "We felt a change needed to be made, that we needed to do some things a little bit differently. ... We have two All-Stars and some talented young players and some savvy veterans, and we have to get them to play at a higher level, so I felt like we needed to make a change."

The Wizards have been without two of their key players. Gilbert Arenas, the All-Star guard whom the Wizards in July signed to a six-year, $111 million contract, underwent a third surgery on a knee and has not played this season.

Brendan Haywood, the team's starting center, injured a wrist in training camp and will miss most, if not all, of this season.

The short-handed Wizards lost to an even more short-handed New York Knicks team on Saturday night that was playing back-to-back games, and Grunfeld had seen enough.

He said that the team was headed in the wrong direction and that things "had grown stale."

Tapscott was completely caught off-guard by the firing of Jordan.