With the Celtics on the verge of elimination in the 2023 Eastern Conference finals, did the Houston Rockets unknowingly contribute to Boston’s struggles by hiring former head coach Ime Udoka?
According to ESPN’s national NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski, that may have been the case. On Monday night, Woj reported on television that Houston’s decision to hire Udoka in late April may have caused additional unrest within Boston’s locker room.
Among his comments:
This locker room never got over Ime Udoka’s dismissal as head coach. These players did not accept the organization’s reasoning for doing it. They thought it was a wild overreaction. There were a lot of the people on the outside thought it was an overreaction. That it was an HR matter.
I think for this team and talking to the management, they never got any more answers than the public was getting on this. This doesn’t mean they haven’t accepted Joe Mazzulla as head coach, but this is a team that really believed in Ime Udoka and had a strong connection with him.
I think there were a couple instances this season where a lot of that angst resurfaced. First, when the Brooklyn Nets nearly hired Udoka as head coach, and then when the Rockets did. Certainly, those were factors.
The complete segment can be viewed below. Wojnarowski also suggested the Celtics possibly made a mistake in not hiring a more experienced assistant coach under Mazzulla, who replaced Udoka.
Game 4 between the Celtics and Heat, in which Miami can sweep their way to the NBA Finals, takes place Tuesday night.
