The Boston Celtics have officially suspended head coach Ime Udoka for the entire 2022-23 NBA season. In a statement released Thursday evening, the Celtics said "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."
Udoka issued a statement through ESPN's Malika Andrews, saying "I want to apologize to our players, fans, the entire Celtics organization, and my family for letting them down. I am sorry for putting the team in this difficult situation, and I accept the team's decision. Out of respect for everyone involved, I will have no further comment."
As expected, the Celtics have elevated assistant coach Joe Mazzulla to interim head coach.
Karalis' take:
The sentence "a decision about his future with the Celtics beyond this season will be made at a later date," is a bit jarring. The cynic in me says if the Celtics keep it rolling with Mazzulla at the helm, they'll just make that official, fire Udoka, and let him go repair his reputation somewhere else. If they struggle, then Mazzulla can go back to the bench and they can try to start fresh with Udoka next season.
Mazzulla was a finalist for the Utah job that went to fellow Celtics assistant Will Hardy, so he was clearly ready to enter the pipeline at some point. The Celtics are making that happen now, and we'll see how it goes.
Udoka's statement is basically an acknowledgement that the facts as we know them, however few there are, are correct. He basically admits to everything by saying he let everyone down and that he put the team in this situation.
Also, accepting the team's decision in a public statement means we won't see any ugly lawsuits over the course of the season.
There are still a lot of unanswered questions, and most of those will remain unanswered. Udoka understood what he was getting into as the head coach of the Celtics, so he gets that there's media scrutiny over this. The other people involved did not, and there's no reason to violate their privacy because of this. The internet being the internet, though, there will be details floating around no matter what. So if you're good with Google, you can probably find out the stuff the team will never touch.
This story is about 24 hours old and the shock of it all is still very much fresh. This is a suckerpunch of a story, and everyone is still looking around asking themselves what the hell is going on here.
