When the news surrounding Celtics head coach Ime Udoka first dropped on Wednesday night, it was as puzzling as it was vague.
Udoka, who took the team to the NBA Finals in his first year as the Celtics’ head coach, was reportedly set to be suspended for the entire 2022-23 season for violating team policies.
That was about the only concrete information we had at the time thanks to NBA insiders Adrian Wojnarowski and Shams Charania.
The other part of the report was that the suspension was due to some sort of consensual relationship between Udoka and a female team staffer, which the team had policies prohibiting or limiting.
Because of the unclarity of the news, and because it had the feeling of something more serious on the horizon, we chose not to report on it.
And we’re glad we did because over the next two days, the situation escalated dramatically.
Yet two days later, we’re all still in the dark as to what actually happened.
After the flame was ignited on Wednesday evening, it was fanned by the Celtics team statement on Thursday evening.
“The Boston Celtics announced today that the team has suspended Head Coach Ime Udoka for the 2022-23 season for violations of team policies. A decision about his future with the Celtics beyond this season will be made at a later date. The suspension takes effect immediately,” said the team in a statement.
On Friday morning, the Celtics held a press conference in which team owner Wyc Grousbeck and President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens vaguely addressed the situation with extremely limited detail.
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