A former NBA playoff coach is back on the court, doing what he was made to do: Coach basketball. It's the location of the court on which former Wizards coach Eddie Jordan has made his return that might surprise many: He's in a rented gym off a high school campus, coaching his alma mater's freshman boys basketball team.
As chronicled by the Washington Post's Josh Barr, Jordan has returned to coaching after a two-year absence by taking the reins of the Washington (D.C.) Archbishop Carroll High freshman basketball team. Instead of drilling the likes of former All-Stars Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler on the finer points of his intricate motion offense, Jordan is now trying to get 14-year-olds to navigate simple drills, all while serving as his own equipment manager.
If picking up the balls and orange cones after practice wasn't enough proof of the realities of Jordan's new job, there's always this: His team doesn't even have its own locker room; at the team's rented practice space during the week, Jordan's freshmen change into and out of their practice uniforms on a bench a couple feet from the baseline under the basket at the public recreation center, all while a group of Washington-area Jazzercisers waited to get the gym for themselves.
Yet Jordan appears content with his role. The coach is taking no salary this year while he continues to receive the remaining $3 million of salary owed to him for the final season on his contract with the 76ers, who fired him in 2010.
"I just felt, to be in a gym and helping kids, I wanted to see what kind of group I will get," Jordan said. "It's my high school. It's Carroll. ... I wanted to give back.
"My eighth-grade coach was very instrumental with me and other kids in Southeast and I saw the guidance and discipline and structure and saw how it changed kids' lives, not just basketball, but other qualities of life," Jordan said. "Whether you're good at basketball or not, you can help kids at the level establish discipline and structure and teamwork."
While Jordan might be the most famous Carroll coach, he isn't the only one; the Lions' head basketball coach is Reggie Williams, a fellow Carroll alum who went on to play at Georgetown and in the NBA before returning to the prep level for the 2010-11 season.
Still, even his own return to the prep coaching ranks couldn't help Williams prepare for the sense of shock he got in learning that Jordan wanted to play a role in building up the Carroll program, let alone that he was willing to work with the school's least experienced squad.
"[Carroll athletic director George Leftwich, who is Jordan's former high school coach] came to me and said Eddie was interested, but I didn't believe it," Williams told the Post. "A couple months passed and he said he was serious about Eddie wanting to get involved. So I got in contact with Eddie and he wanted to do it. I could't tell him no.
"I don't know an NBA coach that would touch the high school level, let alone the freshman team. But he loves what he's doing."
There can be little doubt that Jordan does love what he's doing. If he didn't, there would be absolutely no reason for him to be spending his afternoons trying to keep people waiting to kick off a Jazzercise class at bay.
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