Woj: Celtics Locker Room 'Never Got Over Ime Udoka's Dismissal as Head Coach'

Some members of the Boston Celtics are reportedly still upset with how the team handled former head coach Ime Udoka.

Udoka led the Celtics to the NBA Finals as a first-year head coach last season. However, the team suspended him in September for the entire 2022-23 season after an investigation "found multiple violations of team policies."

The team turned to Joe Mazzulla as Udoka's replacement and removed his interim tag in February.

With Boston now trailing the Miami Heat 3-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski (h/t RealGM) shed some light on how those dynamics affected the team.

"This locker room never got over Ime Udoka's dismissal as head coach," he said Monday. "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 who thought it was an overreaction. That it was an HR matter.

"I think for this team and talking with management, they never got any more answers than the public was getting on this. That 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 Nets were connected to Udoka early in the season as they searched for a replacement for Steve Nash but ultimately settled on assistant Jacque Vaughn. Shams Charania of The Athletic reported in November that public "outcry" was one of the "several factors" why they did not hire Udoka.

The Houston Rockets wound up hiring Udoka as their head coach in April.

In the aftermath of that decision, Wojnarowski said members of the NBA league office read the report that came from the Udoka investigation and determined "there was nothing that they found to be disqualifying to work again in the NBA."

In September, Charania reported the head coach had "an intimate relationship with a female member of the organization."

"Team leadership was led to believe by both parties that the relationship was consensual," Charania wrote. "But sources said that the woman recently accused Udoka of making unwanted comments toward her—leading the team to launch a set of internal interviews."

Wojnarowski also reported on the situation in September, noting an independent law firm "found that he used crude language in his dialogue with a female subordinate prior to the start of an improper workplace relationship with the woman, an element that significantly factored into the severity of his one-year suspension."

The language was reportedly concerning because of the power dynamics at play since Udoka was a workplace superior.