UDOKA’S IMPRINT, HISTORY MANIFESTS WITH CELTICS
MILWAUKEE >> When Mike Budenholzer looks at the Celtics now, he sees a fiveman extension of a personality he knows well.
The Milwaukee coach was on Gregg Popovich’s staff in San Antonio not only for the end of Ime Udoka’s playing career, but also his first years as an assistant. He knows the roughhewn attitude the veteran power forward brought with him, as well as the principles he developed in Popovich’s system.
He sees a match.
“I don’t know if he picked that up in San Antonio or picked it up growing up in Portland, but wherever he got it and he brought it, it was something we appreciated in San Antonio,” Budenholzer said recently. “I think you see his teams play that way. They’re a reflection of Ime.
“The system — you know the system. You learn accountability, how important defense is, a lot of things the best teams are emphasizing. Everybody can talk about it, but it’s another thing to go out and do it. Ime is one of those guys that’s a doer, and you see it in his teams.
“I think Ime first and foremost was an incredible defender as a player. He could take on lots of different matchups and guard lots of different players. He had a strength and physicality about him.”
That the Celtics have reached this conference semifinals series against the defending NBA champions — indeed, played the best basketball in the league since January — is a testament to Udoka imposing his will on an underperforming team.
This isn’t a “my way or the highway thing,” nothing dictatorial. The rookie coach, 11 years removed from his playing days, seeks out the input of his players as much as he walks into the room with a plan.
“The communication part is key,” said Damon Stoudamire, the Celtics assistant coach who has known Udoka since adolescence in Portland, Ore.
“As head coach you may not get all the information all the time, but you need to know some of the information, and one of the big things is an open line of communication with your best players and he has that. When there’s things he feels need to be done for the team, he’ll bounce those things off those guys.
“They probably feel included on a lot of things and that helps as well, because ultimately it’s their team. They have to feel they have some type of say into what’s going on here, and Ime does a great job of that, including them, asking them, whether it’s a decision on the floor or something that might need to be done collectively. But he always seeks their advice or wants their opinion on things.”
It started in New York
Ask anyone in the locker room, and they point back to Jan. 6 in New York
— the night the Celtics blew a 24-point lead and lost at the buzzer on R.J. Barrett’s banked 3-pointer.
During a video session the next day, Udoka first called out himself before demanding accountability from his players. This is when, says Stoudamire, Udoka’s personality truly started to take hold of his players.
“That’s when things clicked for him,” said Stoudamire. “For me that was a moment when he took over the team — this is what it’s gonna be each and every day from this point moving forward. We need to do these things to get better. I’m at fault here, No. 1. We as a coaching staff will get better, but you guys need to get better.
“That was a really good meeting, a good film session the day after that game, and that’s when things kind of turned around for us,” he said. “Over the course of
a couple of weeks it turned around a little bit. You get to February, and right before the All-Star break we started really playing well, and then we come back from break and we were playing well, but we were under the radar and nobody really talked about us. We just took off a little bit, and that was a lot of it — that Knicks loss.”
Udoka’s switching defensive scheme locked in after an inconsistent start, with Marcus Smart and the emerging Rob Williams making the defense elite. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown moved the ball, often with brilliant results. Udoka had been insisting on these principles since Day 1 of training camp.
“The players took that Knicks loss personal too,” said Stoudamire. “I give these players a lot of credit. (They) had a lot of success with Brad (Stevens). He was a helluva coach. And now you’re trying to detox yourself from the things that you were successful with under Brad.
“Now you come in with a new coach who has a different personality and probably a different energy, and now you’ve gotta figure that
out. I’ve been a guy that’s been around several coaching changes. Even if you don’t say it out loud, you’re saying, ‘Well, this isn’t how Brad did it.’
“It’s human nature. What they allowed themselves to do as the trust seeped in more and more, is they allowed themselves to be coachable. For me this is like — Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Marcus who has a strong personality, for them to allow Ime and the rest of the coaching staff to come in here and coach them and buy into it, says a lot about who they are.”
Hunger
Udoka likes to say that he has no interests outside of the game itself. Stoudamire saw the beginnings of that tunnel vision in Portland. Older players — Stoudamire was a star at Wilson High School at the time — played summer ball in a hot, cramped gym at the Oregon Episcopal School. A 13-year-old Udoka started showing up to play, restless from a long commute.
“To be successful, you have to
do things that are out of the ordinary,” said Stoudamire. “This isn’t an on-court thing, this isn’t even something that was an interaction with somebody else. But he had to catch the bus probably an hour, an hour-fifteen to get to these workouts in the summer.
“I was getting rides. He has to catch the bus and the rest of us are getting rides. It was in Tualatin. Beaverton and Tualatin are suburbs of Portland. The equivalent of having to catch the bus from Boston to Waltham every day, and you have to be there by 9 in the morning. You’re leaving at 6:30 or 7 to get to the stop where you get the bus. And he’s getting there every day. The dedication to being successful, the work ethic, all those things come into that, because you don’t catch the bus that far away unless you’re trying to make it.
“He fit in. Where we grew up, we just threw ’em out there. Didn’t matter. Eighth-grader playing with a pro, didn’t matter. You have to do it right. He got thrown out there, continued to hold his own and just got better.” him in that aspect.” Stoudamire understands how the draw of coaching started for Udoka, because the same thing happened to him. He had just wrapped up his fifth season as head coach at University of the Pacific when Udoka asked his old friend to join the Celtics coaching staff. “Without knowing, I think that’s what you get groomed for, lot of times when you are coaching,” said Stoudamire. “But I don’t think any of us know it at that time. Ime was probably
‘The coaching part chose him’
It wasn’t hard, thinking back, to see coaching was going to become Udoka’s calling. His D-League fueled background brought a chip on his shoulder that won over teammates.
Udoka was near the end of his time on Popovich’s staff during Derrick White’s rookie season in 2017-18.
“His whole career he’s been fighting for his life, grinding his way to the NBA and using that chip on his shoulder, that underdog mentality,” said the Celtics guard. “He has that as a coach now, too. He helps us out with that as well.
“I was a rookie, and it was me and a bunch of people — kind of cool to see how he would interact with the guys,” said White. “He was close with LA (LaMarcus Aldridge), and it was cool to see that interaction. The bond from a former player that some people don’t have. Just learn from the same way. When you’re around good minds and good ballplayers, eventually him getting to the pros, starting in Portland and ending up in San Antonio year round, guys without knowing it turn into mentors.
“It happens like this with a lot of people, because it happened like this with me. He was still trying to play and the coaching part chose him. It’s always brought up by somebody else and then you explore it and get your feet wet. Then you think, I like this, and then you start going and going and going. For him that’s how it started, and when you’re in a great organization like San Antonio, it allows you to get your feet wet and learn along the way, before you throw yourself into it 100%. Then you start setting the foundation for you one day becoming a head coach.
“You play with guys who turn into friends. You’re given advice, you’re talking on the floor, you’re being a catalyst. That’s coaching, without you even realizing it. But now you’re framing it different. He did that from the moment he started at Jefferson High School, up until the point he’s at today.”