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In his first season as Boston Celtics head coach, Ime Udoka has guided his team to the NBA Finals and helped them win the opening game of their series against the Golden State Warriors.
Suddenly, a team that struggled to begin the season is now looking like the favorites to lift the Larry O’Brien trophy in the coming weeks. Udoka, often considered to be one of the best young coaches in the NBA, has had a big part to play in the Celtics success, notably by putting his players in positions to be impactful and for formulating a gameplan that made the Celtics the best defensive team in the NBA.
Former Celtics champion Kendrick Perkins has been impressed by Boston’s first year head coach, and on a recent episode of ESPN’s First Take, the 2008 champion shared his thought’s on why Udoka has been so successful in his first year leading a team.
“This Boston Celtics team is real, coach Ime Udoka holds these guys accountable, he’s put together a hell of a game plan, he has his rotations down. He rolled with his bench in that fourth quarter last night.
Payton Pritchard played eight minutes in the fourth quarter, you talk about trust, game one of the finals, he played eight minutes in the fourth. I’m telling you, we don’t talk about Ime Udoka enough, and the phenomenal job he’s been doing, for his adjustments, and his rotations,” Perkins said.
Marcus Smart Shares Opinion on Udoka
Marcus Smart has been one of the success stories of the Celtics season, having moved into the starting point guard role and flourished under Udoka’s stewardship. Of course, Smart isn’t the only player to take a leap this season, but he is the one who’s gone from the team’s sixth man to trusted floor general, and that’s a heck of a jump.
In a recent article for The Ringer, Jackie MacMullen profiled Udoka’s leadership style and shared some of what Smart had told her about the Celtics head coach’s straight-talking form of coaching.
“There are times when I turn the ball over, and he’ll pull me aside and say, ‘What the f*** are you doing? Get your team together! I’m good with it.” Smart told MacMullan.
While Udoka’s achievements this year may come as a shock to some, it pays to remember that he’s been part of elite rosters before, both as a player and an assistant coach, so he came into this role knowing what it takes to be a championship-caliber team and has quickly instilled that mentality in his players.
Udoka Shares Thoughts on Coaching in the Finals
Being an assistant during a finals run, and being the head coach during a final run are two wildly different things, or at least, that would be your initial train of thought. Yet, according to Udoka, not much changes as it’s ‘just basketball’ at the end of the day.
Speaking to the media following the Celtics’ 120-108 victory over the Warriors on June 2, Udoka openly answered a question regarding his experience of leading the Celtics into their first NBA Finals in over a decade.
“It’s just basketball. It’s the things that we’ve done well all season and really improved in the second half of the season, the Playoffs. Continue to do all those things well. It’s all the little things that win and lose a series. When you go down the list, whether it’s Brooklyn, Milwaukee, Miami, or now this series, it’s all the same thing: taking care of the basketball, keeping guys out of transition, good offense, offensive rebounds.
So the same things continue to come back up. Obviously, Golden State is a team that will make you pay if you have some missteps as far as that. So for us, try to simplify it, keep it simple with our guys and just get back to the basics playing defense at a high level, sharing the ball offensively, none of that changes because we’re in the Finals now,” Udoka told reporters.
The Celtics are now just three wins away from lifting the Larry O’Brien trophy and will face the Warriors again on June 5 for the second game of a potential seven-game series.
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