An explosive new report by Adrian Wojnarowski sheds light on why the Boston Celtics have looked so bad against the Miami Heat that they’ve seemingly given up on their season – and on head Joe Mazzulla.
The latest “Woj bomb” on Boston concerns the saga of Ime Udoka last fall, when the now-Houston Rockets head coach was let go over a reported relationship with a Celtics employee. According to Woj, the Celtics couldn’t let the firing go, and it’s contributed in large part to their disconnect with Mazzulla, which now has a good chance of torpedoing their season.
It sounds like, based on Woj’s reporting, the players were not and are still not happy about how the organization handled the whole thing.
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There will be plenty of blame to go around from top to bottom, if and when the Heat put an and to this miserable series by the Celtics.
In light of Mazzulla’s inexperience and how it has been badly exposed against Miami, President of Basketball Ops Brad Stevens is deserving of some criticism and second-guessing. He left his staff excessively thin and put a 34-year-old first-time head coach in charge of a team with championship aspirations. That will go down as a big misstep by Stevens.
But ultimately, it’s hard not to blame Tatum and Brown for this mess more than anyone. All-NBA players should be able to overcome bad coaching, regardless. But they also need to be mature enough to handle organizational decisions better than they apparently did with the head coaching change.
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