“This team, this locker room, they never got over Ime Udoka’s dismissal as head coach,” Wojnarowski said. “These players did not accept the organization’s reasoning for doing it. They thought it was a wild overreaction.”
Udoka, who led the Celtics to the NBA finals after going 51-31 in the regular season as a first-year head coach, was suspended for the entire 2022-23 season after an investigation found he committed “multiple” violations of team policies. Joe Mazzulla was named the interim head coach in Boston to begin the season. That interim tag was lifted in February as the Celtics named Mazzulla the team’s full-time head coach and extended his contract.