Nets shifting towards hiring Ime Udoka as head coach

After the departure of coach Steve Nash, the Brooklyn Nets are progressing on the hiring of suspended Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka, sources instructed ESPN.

A deal is predicted to be finalized by mid-week, bringing again Udoka to attempt to salvage a reeling franchise amid turmoil and dropping, sources stated.

The Nets, who’ve misplaced 5 of seven video games to start out the season, will maintain assistant Jacque Vaughn because the performing head coach till Udoka can begin the job.

Boston suspended Udoka for the 2022-2023 season for an improper relationship with a subordinate previous to coaching camp, however sources say that the Celtics by no means deliberate to face in the way in which of Udoka accepting one other teaching job.

Udoka was an assistant for one season below Nash in 2020-2021 earlier than turning into the Celtics’ coach and main them to the NBA Finals final season. Udoka has an extended historical past with Nets basic supervisor Sean Marks, courting again to them working along with the San Antonio Spurs.

The Nets have been vetting the circumstances round Udoka’s suspension and consider that he can tighten up the league’s Twenty ninth-ranked defensive workforce and command management in a troublesome locker room, sources stated. Udoka spent a season with Ben Simmons — a participant the Nets are desperately making an attempt to get on observe — on the Philadelphia 76ers’ teaching employees in 2019-2020.

The impartial regulation agency probe into Udoka discovered that he used crude language in his dialogue with a feminine subordinate previous to the beginning of an improper office relationship with the lady, a component that considerably factored into the severity of his one-year suspension, sources instructed ESPN in September.

These investigative findings — which described verbiage on Udoka’s half that was deemed particularly regarding coming from a office superior — contributed to what was an unlikely pathway to his reinstatement as Celtics coach in 2023, sources stated.

The ability dynamic related to a superior’s improper relationship with a employees member was the first discovering and coverage violation cited within the regulation agency’s report, which was commissioned by the Celtics and accomplished early final week, sources stated.