Marcus Smart, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown speaks out about Ime Udoka suspension

With several issues and concerns swarming them out this tail end of the offseason, it was very well expected that the primary talk in town around the Celtics huddle during their Monday media day was all about Ime Udoka. Shockingly, players of the Cs weren’t aware of the murmurs surrounding their suspended head coach until the media finally disclosed some tidbits of the scandal from the past several days.

Though he believes that he has the right to know the information as a player, Marcus Smart will not dare to cross the line for the privacy and respect of the personnel involved.

“We don’t know what the organization knows. It’s kind of hard to say. We don’t know what they know so we don’t know what they’re supposed to tell us or what we’re supposed to know. This is where this is at,” Smart said. “Literally, no one knows anything right now. As a player, you’d like to know, but at the same time, it’s none of our business. It’s their lives. It’s the people involved. It’s between them. We should respect their privacy just like we want our privacy respected. As a player, you would like to know, but it’s not an obligation.”

Meanwhile, franchise star Jayson Tatum only discovered the news about Udoka via Twitter, while admitting that he is still processing what happened. 

“Along with everyone else I’m still trying to process it all. Apparently, there’s a lot of things they can’t speak about,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s hard for me to answer if things were handled the right way or if they weren’t. I guess for a lot of reasons I don’t know all the details.”

Like the others, Brown has no further idea about the fiasco.

“Nobody really has the information. It’s difficult to make a comment on how things were supposed to go or how the process went or anything. There’s not a lot of information that’s being shared with me personally or anybody else so I can’t make a comment on it. That does make it difficult,” Brown said. “I wish we had more details. It’s hard to make a decision based on whether it’s consensual or not in the workplace or whatever is going on. We know that’s happened before in the workplace. But I guess there’s more to it. But don’t know. It’s not being shared with me. It’s hard to really comment on something if you’re not filled in with all the details. I don’t really have a comment on my feeling or emotions about it.”

At the end of the day, Smart can only offer nothing but love for Udoka, who helped Boston to reach its first Finals appearance in 12 years.

“I still love Ime as a person and as a coach. It’s something unfortunate that has happened to him,” Smart said. “That doesn’t take away from what he did as a coach and how he turned this team around and led this team to the finals. It’s unfortunate that this is where we’re at. We still love him.”