Udoka's Growth From a Year Ago, Like the Celtics Players, Will Be Put To The Test Early This Season
With key injuries and a target on their backs after last season's trip to the NBA Finals, Celtics head coach Ime Udoka will be hard-pressed to get the C's off to a good start this season.
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For the first half of last season, Celtics Nation had every reason to be somewhat skeptical of Ime Udoka.
Like his players, there were stretches when his coaching acumen looked on point.
Other times?
Not so much.
What we saw in him as a rookie, was a coach who, like his players, evolved as the season moved on.
Udoka seemed very set in his ways, resisting the seductive nature of making a change just to appease fans and the media.
Instead, he kept rotations pretty much the same as the team wobbled along as a .500 team.
But eventually, he made a slight defensive tweak with Robert Williams III basically becoming a defensive free safety, a move that unlocked the potential of the Celtics.
He figured out what they needed in order to be better, something he will be charged with doing under less-than-ideal circumstances to start the season.
We hear all the time about players who get better from one year to the next.
Jaylen Brown is a great example of this.
He came into the NBA as an above-average athlete whose offensive was clearly a work in progress.
Brown put in the work, was an All-Star just two years ago, and has averaged more than 20 points each of the last two seasons.
But what about coaches?
What can they do to be better from one year to the next?
The obvious answer is to win more games.
But as we've seen, growth isn't quite that simple when it comes to coaching.
This is why the injuries that Boston is dealing with now will put Udoka's growth as a head coach on full display from the outset.
There was a great deal of patience early on with him, for a number of reasons.
Grace is the one thing most first-year NBA head coaches get a good helping of during the first couple of months of the season.
Udoka had some early skeptics for sure. But there was a sense that sooner or later, he would figure out what he needed to do in order for Boston to be a good team and take its rightful place as an NBA contender.
Even with Danilo Gallinari out for what's expected to be most of this season, and the recent news that Robert Williams III was having arthroscopic surgery on his left knee and is expected to miss 4-6 weeks, there's an expectation that this team will still be good and should still get off to a better start than what we saw last season.
This is where Udoka's growth as a head coach has to take center stage.
Because there's a sense that if Boston gets off to a slow start this season, it'll be yet another sad finish to the season.
And keep in mind, 'sad' for this team is coming up short of a return trip to the NBA Finals.
The bar for success is indeed high.
You would have to go back to the Paul Pierce-KG-Ray Allen days when a Celtics team opened the season as a legit favorite not only because of their talent but also because their core group had the receipts (a trip to the NBA Finals last year) to validate their top-shelf status in the NBA.
Not only does Boston return its core group, but the leaders of it are in their early-to-mid 20s.
So we know the keys to fielding a championship-caliber team, even with the injuries to Gallinari and Williams, are in place.
It's on Udoka to put those pieces in place to be most effective.
And unlike last season when the Celtics had minimal pressure to win it all, there was no problem easing their way into the season.
They can't do that this year.
There are too many threats in the East to waste games for not showing up to compete.
Boston has to come out and find ways to win more often than not, at the start of the season.
It'll take many hands to get this done and show the growth from a year ago.
And it's not just players whose growth will be on display to start the season.
The same holds true for head coach Ime Udoka.