OFFICIAL REPORT: Boston Celtics Ownership Called Back Former Coach To…

 

Boston Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck said the organization’s decision to suspend Ime Udoka for the entire 2022-23 NBA season came after an investigation by an independent law firm uncovered multiple violations of team policies.

“I am concerned about the situation and its impact on everybody in the Celtics’ organization,” Grousbeck said during a news conference Friday morning at the team’s practice facility

. “I do hope this represents the beginning of a new chapter, and a chance to turn the page and move forward with things, to some extent, resolved.”

Both Grousbeck and Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens said little about the specifics of the case involved, or what policies Udoka violated.

Sources previously told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that Udoka had an intimate relationship with a female member of the franchise’s staff.

 

 

Grousbeck said once the organization had been made aware of a potential situation in the organization within the past few weeks, it hired the law firm to conduct an investigation, which concluded Wednesday.

It was at that point the team chose to suspend Udoka for a full season, with Grousbeck saying the suspension will end June 30, 2023 — the final day of the 2022-23 league year.

He said it would come with a “significant” financial penalty, and that no one besides Udoka within the organization was going to be disciplined as a result of the investigation.

Other than that, however, both Grousbeck and Stevens offered few specifics on what transpired and how the decision came to be, nor would they discuss what it would take for Udoka to return to the organization after his suspension ends, saying only that it would be discussed “at a later date,” as the team said in its statement Thursday night.

Stevens also declined to answer when asked directly whether Udoka would be able to have contact with anyone within the organization during his suspension.

Grousbeck did, however, defend the decision to suspend Udoka for the entire season, saying on multiple occasions it was the right outcome.

“We’re not going to get into our deliberations,” Grousbeck said. “This felt right, but there’s no clear guidelines for any of this. It’s conscience and gut feel.

“We collectively came to this and got there but it was not clear what to do but it was clear something substantial needed to be done, and it was.”

Stevens began his remarks by getting emotional, speaking of the impact the past couple of days had on women throughout the organization.

“It’s been a hard time,” Stevens said. “The only thing I would like to say is that I thought, and Wyc mentioned it already, we have a lot of talented women in our organization and I thought [Thursday] was really hard on them.

“Nobody can control Twitter speculation and rampant bulls—, but I do think we as an organization have a responsibility to support them now, because a lot of people were dragged unfairly into that.

Stevens confirmed that assistant coach Joe Mazzulla, 34, would be taking over on an interim basis. Mazzulla is tied with former Celtics assistant and current Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy as the youngest coaches in the league. Mazzulla’s only head-coaching experience is two seasons at a Division II college, Fairmont State in West Virginia, before being hired by Stevens as an assistant in 2019.

Still, Stevens believes Mazzulla is the right person.

“Joe’s going to be in charge,” Stevens said. “It’s not an easy timing for him or the rest of the staff. But he’s an exceptionally sharp and talented person. I believe strongly in him and his ability to lead people, his ability to galvanize a room and get behind him, and his ability to organize and understand all that comes with running a team during the season.”

Stevens was asked if he considered taking over, given he’d spent eight years coaching the Celtics and leading them to the Eastern Conference finals three times before moving to replace Danny Ainge last summer and hiring Udoka to coach. Stevens said he did not — though Grousbeck chimed in that there was a brief conversation between the two about it.

“There’s a lot of factors in play of why I wouldn’t necessarily even want to do that,” Stevens said. “But I do think that — and I’ve told Joe this — I’m going to be there for him, without stepping on his toes, as much as he needs.

“But he doesn’t need much. I believe in that strongly.”

Stevens addressed Mazzulla’s arrests while he was a student at West Virginia University. He was arrested in 2008 for underage drinking and aggravated assault, a case in which he pleaded guilty and paid a fine, and then in 2009 for domestic battery after an incident at a Morgantown bar, a case that was settled out of court and didn’t go to trial.

When he hired Mazzulla as an assistant coach in 2019, Stevens said he “thoroughly” vetted Mazzulla, and those incidents in particular, and said he believes Mazzulla has learned from them and that Stevens himself personally believes in Mazzulla’s character.

“I will tell you this: I believe strongly in Joe’s substantiveness as a person,” Stevens said. “I believe strongly, and he’ll tell you, he’s been very open with me about how those moments impacted him in every which way and you can see it in the way he carries himself. You could see that for a long time. We’ve had years to get to know him.

“I believe strongly that that probably shaped him into who he is today in a really, really good way. But he’ll be the first to tell you, he’s 110% accountable for that, and I’ll be the first to tell you that I believe in him.”

Grousbeck said that both he and Stevens have met with the players ahead of training camp starting next week and he said he would characterize their feelings as “very concerned” about what has transpired.

“It’s not a welcome development,” Grousbeck said.

“But they also, I felt, have energy and focus and commitment and drive to really accomplish great things hopefully this season.

So that’s the commitment I’m feeling from the players and I bet, based on last year and based on everything we know about them, I think that we will be fulfilled.”

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THE FIRST STRIKE in what several legal experts have described as a first-of-its-kind legal war between two NBA teams can be traced back to Aug. 17, 2023.

It came in the form of a letter from the chief legal counsel for the New York Knicks, and it was addressed to Toronto Raptors owner Larry Tanenbaum.

It claimed the Knicks had, only days before, uncovered a dastardly conspiracy at the hands of their Atlantic Division rival, situated some 340 miles away.

It was a plot, the two-page letter alleged, centered on potential “illegal activities” involving a former Knicks employee whom the Raptors had recently hired.

Specifically, the Knicks claimed that Ikechukwu Azotam, who worked for the Knicks as an assistant video coordinator, then as a director of video/analytics/player development assistant, had illegally provided the Raptors with more than 3,000 confidential files, up to and including video scouting reports, play frequency files, a prep book for the 2022-2023 season and opposition research.

It alleged Azotam, after receiving a job offer from Toronto, had begun “secretly forwarding proprietary information from his Knicks email account to his personal Gmail account,” which he then shared with the Raptors.

The Knicks declared their investigation was still ongoing, and that Azotam could be in violation of various international, federal and New York laws.

They wrote civil damages and criminal penalties could include a fine of $5 million.

In the letter, the Knicks made several demands, including that the Raptors destroy what they claim was stolen information while preserving communications on all personal and company devices — namely emails — from Azotam, who worked for the Knicks from 2020 to 2023.

The Knicks expected a response within four days, they wrote, and closed by noting that the Knicks reserved all rights “to pursue this vigorously as we continue to consider our options” — a not-so-subtle hint toward potential legal action.

The Raptors didn’t wait four days to respond. They barely waited one.

The next day, on Friday, Aug. 18, Raptors chief legal officer Peter Miller emailed a one-page, six-sentence response, claiming the organization didn’t know what information, if any, Azotam had relating to his work with the Knicks. It said the Raptors “have no interest in any information” that the Knicks described.

It said that the Raptors would sit down with Azotam to determine what information he had, that they’d preserve any relevant records and that they intended to cooperate to address these concerns.

The Raptors had hoped to conduct an internal investigation and settle the matter behind closed doors, court documents would later suggest, but the Knicks desired another route — and they didn’t wait to act. By the next business day, Monday, Aug. 21, the Knicks filed a 21-page lawsuit in the U.S. Southern District Court in Lower Manhattan, roughly three miles south from where the Knicks play at Madison Square Garden.

Immediately, the conflict entered the public record, and blockbuster headlines spread. The Raptors were blindsided, as they described in a future court filing on Oct.

16, and later said that the defendants named in the suit — including Azotam, Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković, ​​Raptors player development coach Noah Lewis and 10 unknown Raptors employees — didn’t even learn about its filing until it was reported in the press.

In that complaint, the Knicks pushed even further — alleging Azotam’s “theft of data” in early August came at the direction of Rajaković and others in the organization to help “this novice coach in doing his job.”

Rajaković addressed the lawsuit during the team’s Oct. 2 media day, saying, “I know that there’s nothing that I should be worried about. And I cannot wait for this lawsuit to be over so everybody can find the truth.”

On Friday, the Knicks face the Raptors for the first time since the lawsuit was filed, but, in the background of this on-court matchup, their in-court conflict has only intensified.

Lawyers who specialize in the issues at the center of this lawsuit told ESPN that the allegations, and the suit itself, are both strange and surprising — and they raised concerns about both the Knicks’ strategy and the potential ramifications of such a case.

In subsequent court filings, the Raptors have called the lawsuit “baseless” and a “public relations stunt.” They’ve also repeatedly asked for NBA commissioner Adam Silver to settle the dispute.

The Knicks, meanwhile, have repeatedly objected, including in a Nov. 20 court filing in which they argued that Silver’s close relationship with Tanenbaum presents a conflict of interest.

“Tanenbaum serves as Silver’s boss and exercises control over and heavily influences Silver’s continued employment and salary,” the Knicks wrote in the filing obtained by ESPN, later adding, “Silver himself described Tanenbaum as ‘not just my boss as the chairman of the board of governors, but he’s very much a role model in my life.’ If Silver were to preside over the instant dispute, he would be arbitrating a case for his boss and ally.”

The Knicks, Raptors and the NBA declined to comment for this story, but in court filings, which contain internal emails between the teams and the league office itself, the Knicks say they intend to prove at trial that damages exceed $10 million and Azotam illegally provided the Raptors a trove of internal information.

“Can you own a scouting report? The source information is indisputably going to be ‘out there,’ but can a team own its analysis of it? In this respect, the Knicks’ theory represents a truly groundbreaking issue,” said Patrick Hammon, a lawyer and partner at the San Francisco-based firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, which specializes in high-stakes trade secrets litigation. “And it is something that, as best I can tell, is completely unprecedented.”

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RAPTORS PRESIDENT MASAI UJIRI folded his arms across the table facing the assembled media for Raptors media day on Oct. 2. He began what would be a 30-minute question-and-answer session. It took but one minute for the topic to be broached.

It was a two-part query. The first part: How would he characterize his summer in trying to improve the Raptors’ roster? And, secondly, did he have any comment on the Knicks’ lawsuit?

Tensions have long existed between the Knicks and the Raptors, and specifically Ujiri, whose history with James Dolan, the Knicks’ governor and the Madison Square Garden Company’s executive chairman and CEO, dates back to Ujiri’s time with the Denver Nuggets more than a decade ago.

In 2011, when Ujiri helmed the Nuggets, the team traded Carmelo Anthony to the Knicks for a slew of draft picks and players.

Dolan would later be criticized for overpaying rather than waiting for Anthony to join the team — his desired destination, as he stated — in free agency.

(Insult to injury for the Knicks: One of the picks the Nuggets received in that trade was later used to draft current Nuggets guard Jamal Murray.)

In 2013, with Ujiri now in Toronto, the 54-win Knicks traded multiple key players — including Marcus Camby and Steve Novak — and three draft picks for center Andrea Bargnani, whose Knicks

career lasted two injury-plagued seasons. The Knicks haven’t won as many games since and have made the playoffs only twice in the past 11 years.

The Raptors, meanwhile, used one of the picks in that trade to draft Jakob Poeltl, who became a key part of the 2018 trade for Kawhi Leonard, who led the Raptors to a title in 2019.

That same year, in 2013, there was a failed trade between the two teams that would have sent then-27-year-old point guard Kyle Lowry from Toronto to the Knicks. “I was traded,” Lowry said then. “Essentially, I was gone.” The Knicks would have reportedly sent Raymond Felton, Metta World Peace and draft picks to Toronto. But the New York Daily News reported that the deal was vetoed by Dolan, who was sensitive to public perception that Ujiri had won the Anthony trade by a landslide. “Dolan didn’t want to get fleeced again by Masai,” one Knicks source told the Daily News. “They had a deal ready.” Lowry remained with the Raptors and was critical to the team’s 2019 title run.

In 2014, nearly halfway through a 35-minute interview on a Canadian talk show hosted by George Stroumboulopoulos, Ujiri was asked what it meant that Phil Jackson was now associated with the Knicks, who had recently hired the longtime coach and former Knick as team president.

“Absolutely nothing,” Ujiri said, quickly adding that he was kidding. He then said he expected that Jackson would do a “phenomenal job,” but then Ujiri nodded to his competitive persona. “Please clap after this: I hate the Knicks, and I don’t care, really.”

In 2020, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Ujiri had long been sought after to run the Knicks. Specifically, Wojnarowski reported that Ujiri was the “dream candidate” for Dolan. But Ujiri has rebuffed the Knicks’ attempts and, in 2021, signed a new deal with Toronto.

Back in Toronto, sitting in front of a “We The North” lectern, Ujiri pondered the pending lawsuit against his team and all the history that preceded it. He sat straight up, his hands folded into one another, and answered.

“I think there has been one time in the history of the NBA that a team has sued a team,” he said, the corners of his mouth turned up into a subtle grin. “One time.”

Then, Ujiri shrugged.

“Go figure.”