Stephen A. Smith says Celtics playoff struggles are ‘justice’ for handling of Ime Udoka situation
"Maybe it's because you have the coach you shouldn't have."
The Celtics are struggling in the playoffs under first-year head coach Joe Mazzulla. They’re down 3-0 to a Miami Heat team that they beat in last year’s Eastern Conference finals.
Is this what they get for putting a 34-year-old with no NBA head coaching experience in charge of the team, and airing out Udoka’s baggage on his way out?
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith thinks so.
“It doesn’t look good for Mazzulla … but there is a word in my mind that I want everybody to embrace,” Smith said on ESPN’s First Take. “Justice. This is justice for the Boston Celtics. I’m talking to (Celtics governor) Wyc Grousebeck. I’m talking to Boston Celtics ownership. I feel very adamant about that.”
The Celtics suspended Udoka indefinitely for multiple team policy violations after an alleged inappropriate relationship with a female team employee. He and the team eventually parted ways while Mazzulla had his interim tag removed. The punishment was a judgment call for Grousebeck.
“This felt right, but there’s no clear guidelines for any of this,” Grousebeck said at the time. “It’s conscience and gut feel. … We collectively came to this and got there but it was not clear what to do but it was clear something substantial needed to be done, and it was.”
The matter was investigated by an independent law firm, which found that the power dynamic between Udoka and the employee was the primary issue according to ESPN. He also used crude language before the start of the relationship, which contributed to his suspension according to the report.
Udoka has since been hired as head coach of the NBA’s Houston Rockets, who said they felt comfortable hiring him based on the due diligence they conducted.
“Ime Udoka’s actions, his transgressions are not something we need to revisit,” Smith said. “He was wrong, (and) if he had gotten fired no problem. If he had been kept, no problem. But for this organization to handle that situation in the classless fashion that they did as far as I’m concerned, having a press conference where you said nothing nor did anything but bring more attention to Ime Udoka and his transgressions.”
“I have said it countless times over these airwaves and I’ll repeat it one last time,” Smith continued. “All of us in this business know plenty of folks in the world of sports or sports teams that had stuff going on in the office. It was an HR matter. We know people who have been fired for the same thing. We never heard a word. But now, everybody knows what Ime Udoka did because of the way the Boston Celtics handled it.”
The Celtics did not name the other party involved in the relationship, which was reportedly consensual according to Shams Charania of The Athletic.
“And then we want to be sensitive to the other party, as we should,” Smith said. “But nobody thought about the lack of sensitivity to Nia Long (who was in a relationship with Udoka at the time) and what attention it brought to her and how her name and her child were raked through the coals, put on public display. They didn’t think about that. They didn’t care.”
Smith suggested the Celtics’ struggles under Mazzulla are because he was never supposed to be the coach in the first place.
“And so, for me,” Smith said. “When I think about that and I think about what’s happening now, maybe it’s because you have the coach you shouldn’t have. Because he should have been an assistant on the bench.”
Smith added that he feels bad for Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, and that the organization’s leadership put them in a tough spot.
“The Boston Celtics organization is a damn good organization,” Smith said. “But leadership from the top on this particular issue stained this franchise and as far as I’m concerned it should for years. It is justice, what is happening to them right now. That’s right, I said it and I mean every damn syllable that I uttered.”
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