You're killing me, Eddie!
For about the 454543th time in a row, the Wizards got off to a slow start with Jarvis Hayes starting at power forward yesterday. For the first time yesterday, it probably didn't make a difference, because the Wizards were getting killed anyway. Still, it's hard to be able to justify Hayes starting based on the small sample size of results.
Yet Eddie Jordan is not budging, choosing instead to keep starting Hayes until Antawn Jamison comes back.
"We're going to continue to give Jarvis a chance to blossom a little bit, help us and make them make a change," Jordan said.
I've posted this already in the comments section of Wizards Insider, but it's not the small lineup itself that I have a problem with. I cover the basketball team for my campus paper, and they got a huge upset this weekend because they went to a four guard lineup for the first time all season, and the other team couldn't match up with them. There's nothing inherently wrong with using a four guard lineup as a curveball.
But when you start with it, it defeats the whole purpose. Now teams can gameplan and figure out how to best exploit the lineup's weaknesses. The only option then is to try to catch a team by surprise with a more traditional lineup, which is a paradox in and of itself.
So by starting the small lineup, Eddie Jordan is making both the starting lineup AND the bench worse.