If Ime Udoka had a theme song that played, WWE-style, when he walked into practice, it might be Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.”
That’s because no matter what Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown might say about how they want to play or have played, Udoka knows better.
He walks into the Auerbach Center having seen true greatness at work, having been a part of the Tim Duncan/Manu Ginobili/Tony Parker/Gregg Popovich San Antonio Spurs as both player and coach. He knows what Hall of Famers playing unselfish basketball together looks like. He has a ring because of it.
“Excuse me, was you sayin’ something?
“Uh uh you can’t tell me nothing”
Tatum and Brown have talent, and maybe someday they’ll give speeches in Springfield, but right now they’re young guys exploring the studio space. Udoka has been there, and it’s pretty clear that there’s only one style of play he wants to hear about.
“Just in general using the talent that we have to play team basketball,” he said in an appearance on WEEI. “I see a lot of guys that were kind of ‘your turn, my turn’ at times. I think the next step in their evolution is being playmakers in general.”
Tatum and Brown are both exceptional young players, and both were asked to do a lot, maybe too much, last season. Still, in a lot of ways, it wasn’t enough.
“I think it’s time for those guys to grow,” Udoka added. “They’re 23 and 24-years-old, but I always say youth isn’t really an excuse. For whatever it may be, if you have the talent, we have the players there, we’re going to put a lot on their shoulders, and we’re surrounding them with the right pieces to make them successful.”
That’s as direct a challenge to his two stars as you’ll find, and it’s done with tact and grace. It’s the iron fist in a velvet glove; effusive in his praise yet damning in his critique.
The lack of ball movement isn’t some new revelation. Brad Stevens practically begged for it, but it never consistently materialized. Maybe that’s part of why Stevens stepped aside. Maybe it’s part of why he brought Udoka, specifically, in to be the new coach. Maybe Stevens knew Udoka had a better chance of pulling Excalibur from this stone.
Tatum and Brown surely looked around at last year’s team and thought the best chance at winning was to do it themselves. Frankly, they were right. There weren’t many scoring options on the team, so Tatum and Brown had to carry a monster workload. But this also may have created a catch-22.
Tatum and Brown trusted themselves to do a bulk of the scoring, which meant fewer passes to other guys on the team. Those guys need more scoring chances to get into a groove, but when Tatum and Brown give them the ball, they’re not in any kind of groove, so they miss, and Tatum and Brown feel they need to do a bulk of the scoring.
The challenge is trusting teammates enough to keep giving them the ball when they’re missing and building trust and confidence. When they did move the ball last season, the results were generally good. Boston was 7-2 when they notched 30 or more assists. That expanded out to 23-6 when they had 25 or more assists.
Moving the ball works, and Udoka is going to challenge his two young stars to make sure they’re doing just that.
But they’re not the only ones.
Marcus Smart, freshly off a new extension, is going to have to rein it in, too.
“(He’s) a guy that hasn’t always been the starting point guard or a guy that hasn’t had the ball in his hands a ton; he’s yearning for that,” Udoka said. But he made it clear that with the added point guard responsibilities comes with some added discipline.
"The league, in general, is a green light league and you have probably subpar shooters that are taking shots like they're 40-45 percent three-point shooters,” Udoka said. “We don't want to take away from their strengths, and their confidence. So we want to build on those things. But at the same time, you have to realize who you are playing with.”
Udoka has a clear idea of what he wants this team to look like, but it’s also what Stevens wanted the team to look like. While Udoka is being diplomatic in his responses to questions, there is also a lot more between the lines than when Stevens spoke to the media as head coach.
Udoka’s message is pretty clear, and it’s obvious who should be taking the messages to heart. The question as training camp opens a month from now will be whether those messages are truly received.