Jordan a no-show again
An impressive crowd is filling Cox Pavilion on the third day of the NBA Summer League. Still missing, however, is Michael Jordan, the managing member of basketball operations for the Charlotte Bobcats. Jordan has been playing in a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe. He should spend more time on his job.
The Bobcats will be bad next season. They finished 32-50 last season, 12th in the Eastern Conference. The three teams that finished below the Bobcats in the East — Milwaukee, New York and Miami — all will be better.
Jordan hired his old North Carolina pal, Larry Brown, to coach the team. It’s a desperate move doomed to fail. Brown could be thinking about a contract buyout by February, if not sooner.
Brown, observing today’s first game, already appears disgusted. The Bobcats blew a late lead and lost to the New Orleans Hornets, 77-75.
Brown blew off an interview request Saturday from a Review-Journal reporter. No big deal. He’s a boring talker anyway. The consensus opinion among the media here is Charlotte will not win 35 games next season. Brown has a very young team, and the 67-year-old does not work well with kids.
Jordan might be one of the league’s worst executives. He’s not as bad as Isiah Thomas, the clown who helped Brown wreck the New York Knicks. But Jordan’s greatness as a player is lost in the front office.
The Bobcats drafted Texas point guard D.J. Augustin and 7-foot center Alexis Ajinca in the first round. Augustin looked good while scoring a team-high 15 points in the loss to the Hornets. But Ajinca, who had 11 points and four rebounds, is not ready for the NBA.
Jordan made a colossal blunder in 2001 when he was with the Washington Wizards. He drafted Kwame Brown No. 1 overall and passed up Pau Gasol. Tony Parker went 28th and Gilbert Arenas went 31st in that draft, proving that several NBA execs are lacking in the area of talent evaluation.
One last note from the first game: former UNLV star Dalron Johnson played seven minutes and scored one point for the Hornets.
