Nets Still Working Through Final Stages of Hiring Ime Udoka as Coach

The Nets continue to work through the final stages of vetting the potential hiring of Ime Udoka as head coach, per Adrian Wojnarowski and Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.

Udoka has been on the Nets’ radar perhaps before they even fired Steve Nash on Tuesday, as relayed by Jake Fischer of Yahoo Sports. 

Udoka, 45, led the Celtics to the Finals in his first season as an NBA head coach. He was then suspended for the year for what the team called an inappropriate relationship with a female employee.

NetsDaily reported that he also sent repeated inappropriate messages to multiple female staffers.

While the Nets certainly have more details, and perhaps think the punishment fit the crime for the Celtics, they seem to believe that “misconduct with a junior employee should not end a person’s career,” Fischer wrote.

Brooklyn seems to be viewing the Udoka hiring as sort of a last-gasp effort to turn things around in the era of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.

“This very much is probably for this Nets’ group, this iteration, this core, this is probably the last ditch effort to make this work,” Wojnarowski said of the Nets potentially hiring Udoka, via RealGM.

Udoka was an assistant under Nash with the Nets for one season, before taking the Celtics job in the summer of 2021. 

Prior to his coaching career, Udoka was a small forward with the Lakers in 2004, then spent time with the Knicks, Trail Blazers, Spurs and Kings from 2006-11. He also played professionally overseas, then served as an assistant with the Spurs for seven years.

“There is a prevailing school of thought in NBA coaching circles that the task simply boils down to maximizing a team’s star players,” Fischer wrote. “And there has been no taller task than with these Brooklyn Nets.”