The Boston Celtics’ Jayson Tatum revealed that he was getting ready for training camp when he found out that head coach Ime Udoka would have been facing a protracted suspension. However, he maintained that Tatum had no access to any insider knowledge. How then did he find out the news?
Tatum was one of the Celtics players who made his first public remarks on Monday following the team’s announcement on Thursday that Udoka will be suspended for the 2022–2023 NBA season due to undefined “violations of team policies.” At the team’s media day, the players made their way onto a dais one by one and admitted to knowing very little about the events that had led to Udoka’s punishment in front of a bank of cameras and reporters.
Marcus Smart: “We’ve been through hell.” Simply taken by surprise. We’re all simply in the wind, just like everyone else, because nobody really knows anything. The past few days have been perplexing.
As they attempt to regroup for another shot at a title after falling to Golden State in the N.B.A. finals the previous season, the players find Udoka’s absence and the covert nature of the inquiry into his misbehavior concerning.
“As far as initial reactions, I think we were all shocked at what was going on — a little confused,” Brown said. “But a lot of the information wasn’t being shared with us, or with members of the team, so I can’t really comment on it.”
A Celtics spokesman declined to say how many violations there were.
In a news conference last week, Wyc Grousbeck, the team’s majority owner, cited “privacy reasons” in declining to elaborate on the nature of Udoka’s misconduct. The Celtics’ decision to suspend Udoka came after a monthslong investigation by an independent law firm, Grousbeck said.
On Monday, Tatum, Brown and Smart were among the team’s high-profile players who indicated that they did not know about the investigation while it was happening. In fact, Smart said, Udoka had recently visited him and a couple of teammates in Los Angeles. Smart was asked if anything about Udoka’s behavior struck him as unusual while he was in California.
