Celtics coach Ime Udoka clears the air on the locker room issues

New year, same old Boston Celtics. Even with Brad Stevens no longer as the team’s coach, the same locker room issues pop up. Now, everybody around the NBA is talking about Marcus Smart’s comments on his teammates.

Smart pretty much blamed Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown for their epic blunder against the Chicago Bulls. The veteran guard said that they don’t want to pass the ball and that they still have some learning to do.

Needless to say, that prompted plenty of rumors around the NBA, with ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski saying that they even had a player-only meeting. That’s why coach Ime Udoka had to dismiss those rumors right away.

Ime Udoka Says The Celtics Didn’t Have A Players-Only Meeting

“It wasn’t really a players-only meeting,” Udoka said, via as quoted byMass Live. “We had a team dinner scheduled way before anything happened. That was planned for some weeks now and we gave the players their time before the coaching staff and everybody else came down.”

Udoka acknowledged that some of the things Smart said were actually talked about in practice, so it’s not like it was breaking news for the Celtics’ young superstar duo:

“Well, the things that he said, some of the things he said, are things we talk about every day. I’ve preached that from day one,” said Udoka, as per the Boston Herald. “Jayson and Jaylen are guys growing in that area, being playmakers, so, it’s stuff we’re constantly showing on film, talking about, so it’s nothing new as far as what we have shown and done, and they’ve done a great job in those areas. So, Marcus and Jaylen and Jayson have a history together, being together for a long time, and every team I’ve ever been on or coached has had moments where they butt heads. So it’s nothing that we haven’t talked about, nothing, no area that they haven’t shown improvement and growth in, and so we’ll leave it at that. I mean, it’s something that’s addressed and continually preached with those guys and so not trying to blow it out of proportion.”

Even if that’s true, that’s not something you do. You don’t throw your teammates under the bus in public and vent out those kinds of things. Smart should’ve known better.