Time for Jordan to deliver the goods

Larry Brown's departure as Bobcats coach means the future of the franchise is now officially, and entirely, in the hands of owner Michael Jordan.

Brown's presence was a crutch for Jordan, and that's why Jordan made sure to publicize that Brown will remain as an adviser, but Jordan has a lot of work to do with a roster that, he said, "has clearly not lived up to'' expectations.

It's a roster he and general manager Rod Higgins put together or, in some cases, tore apart. The team let Raymond Felton go to the Knicks in free agency and never replaced him with another starting-caliber point guard, something that Brown openly criticized. This was a team he led to its first winning season and first playoff berth only last season. This season, without Felton and without a legitimate big man (Tyson Chandler was dumped to Dallas), the Bobcats once again look like a lottery team at 9-19.

Jordan's first move was to replace Brown with Paul Silas as an interim coach. Silas is much less demanding than Brown, which the players certainly will welcome. But is that really the best thing?

The next step is to address the obvious issues with the roster, starting with the lack of a true point guard to run a team of erratic players such as Stephen Jackson and Gerald Wallace.

The team clearly has to do something, especially with the bottom two-thirds of the East so weak that everyone still has a legitimate shot at a playoff berth at this point. Since he took over as owner last spring, Jordan has been notably hands-on with just about every aspect of the franchise, from marketing to game presentation. It now is time to make his mark on the product on the floor.