Quite a few details on the whole Ime Udoka situation have come out in the weeks after the scandal came to light, but there is still a lot of mystery surrounding the situation. We had some league insiders saying the situation is a lot worse than what we know, and Matt Barnes famously withdrew his support for Udoka after hearing what had actually transpired.
It just seems like a terrible situation all around and the Celtics punished Udoka for his actions by suspending him for the 2022-23 season, but that raised a few questions in itself. If what Udoka did was so bad that they had to suspend him for so long, then why even bother bringing him back later?
Stephen A. Smith Has An Interesting Theory On Why The Boston Celtics Didn’t Fire Ime Udoka
There was a report that the reason he wasn’t fired was that it was the offseason and the Celtics would have time to properly investigate all that Udoka had done. Stephen A. Smith, however, has a different theory on why the Celtics didn’t fire him and it had something to do with the Brooklyn Nets.
(starts at 1:02 mark):
“I believe part of the reason he was suspended, but not fired, is because the Boston Celtics did not want him to end up in Brooklyn. I believe that Ime Udoka, had he gotten fired, with all the stuff that happened — remember, the operative words were ‘consensual relationship, violation of organization policy!’ So because it’s that, it’s about your behavior, which we don’t endorse, as opposed to a crime.”
“And because there was nothing that was put out there that said it was a crime, I believe that if Ime Udoka had been fired by the Boston Celtics, the Brooklyn Nets would’ve fired Steve Nash and brought that brother back and he would be the coach for the Brooklyn Nets right now. That’s how emphatic I feel about this.”
Smith made sure to say that this wasn’t inside information and that it is his own theory of why the Celtics didn’t fire Udoka. It could be possible, but there is no way to verify it.
Adrian Wojnarowski did report that rival teams are trying to understand how serious the situation is, as they evaluate him for employment in the future and perhaps the Nets are one of those teams. Udoka was an assistant under Steve Nash at the Nets before being hired by the Celtics, so there is some familiarity there. At the end of the day, though, only the top brass at the Celtics know all the details and they aren’t going to open their mouth on this subject. Still, it is an interesting theory.
