Will Jordan Can The Eye Candy?
When your team is struggling, the cliche goes, you fire the coach, not the players. But if you're Washington Wizards boss Michael Jordan, you fire the cheerleaders too. Two weeks ago Jordan canned coach Gar Heard. Now, sources close to His Airness tell NEWSWEEK, M.J. is itching to oust the notoriously awful Wizards dancers. "Getting the right players is hard," Jordan grumbled at a recent game, one team executive recalls. "Finding cheerleaders who can count on time shouldn't be." The girls expect the ax to fall. Says one: "They fired Gar after a big win. They'll probably fire us after one of our better performances." That could take a while. The dancers, paid about $50 a game, are known around the NBA for their sloppy execution. Of course, so are the Wizards players.
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Devin Gordon is the editor of Newsweek Digital, the umbrella company encompassing Newsweek's various web properties, including Newsweek.com and Newsweek Mobile. Previously, from June 2007 to June 2009, he was senior editor of the magazine's Periscope section, which was nominated for a National Magazine Award for "best section" in 2008. Previously, he was a senior writer, writing about film, television, sports and popular culture for the Arts and Entertainment and Society sections. He was part of the Newsweek reporting team for the past three Olympic games, including the Salt Lake City winter games in 2002, the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, where he covered swimmer Michael Phelps, and the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, for which he wrote Newsweek's cover story about skier Bode Miller.
During his tenure at the magazine, Gordon has written about everything from HBO's "The Wire" to rock band Coldplay to Oscar-winner film directors Ang Lee and Peter Jackson. He profiled "Curb Your Enthusiasm" creator Larry David on the eve of the series' fourth season debut, and "The Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan just prior to the film's record breaking release. For Newsweek's year-end double-issue of 2002, he wrote "The Matrix Makers," (Jan. 6, 2003), a cover story about the two upcoming "Matrix" sequels—the first behind-the-scenes look at the new films by any publication.
Gordon joined Newsweek in 1998, after graduating from Duke University. His first cover story was "The Dominator" (June 18, 2001), an examination of what makes Tiger Woods tick. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Sharon Begley is the science columnist and science editor of Newsweek. She is the coauthor of the 2002 book The Mind and the Brain and the author of the 2007 book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain.
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