Ime Udoka's Boston Celtics made it almost 20 minutes through Game 3 of the NBA Finals before committing enough bone-headed mistakes to drive him to utter expletives that rivaled the "F*** you Draymond" chants from fans behind him.
With just under five minutes left in the second quarter, the C's held a 12-point lead over the Warriors thanks in large part to an impressive start from Jaylen Brown. But point guard Marcus Smart chucked a pass with bizarre directness to Warrior Andrew Wiggins, who dished it up court to Steph Curry for a three.
That's when Udoka called timeout and issued a simple request to his team, as recounted in a tweet by Heavy.com writer Steve Bulpett:
"According to a source, Udoka stepped into the huddle and said, 'Will you guys stop playing like a**holes?'"
The message got through. After coughing up three stupid turnovers in three minutes, the Celtics only committed four during the rest of the game. That's a major turnaround for a team who held a turnover rate around 20% for the entire second half of Game 2.
It's that directness that seems to work so well with this Celtics team, who can make the hard stuff look easy and the easy stuff look so damn hard. They can earn themselves a fair deal of cussing out from their rookie coach, according to Grant Williams, who was asked about the "a**hole" timeout at Celtics practice Thursday.
"Depending on what day that was, I can confirm it multiple times. Last night, I don't know if I heard the a-hole word. He might have said something else, but it's definitely in relation to that," Williams said.
Udoka's success getting through to his players is most evident in their ability to make game-to-game adjustments. Just look at the difference between Games 2 and 3. He was disappointed with the team's lack of aggressiveness in the paint in their Game 2 loss.
"A lot of times it's just not getting shots up or being a little hesitant instead of attacking the basket, looking for fouls a lot of times. That's what got us in trouble," Udoka said immediately after the loss.
Fast forward to Wednesday night, when his players outscored the Warriors 52-26 in the paint.
Safe to say, his point was taken. Sometimes players just need a straight-forward reminder, even if it's not in the prettiest language.
"You try to simplify it. The main thing with us is, having a carryover from game to game and do the things that make us successful," Udoka said Thursday.
The next challenge for the rookie coach and his young group will be finding consistency in playoff series, but they've only been together for less than a year, and the results speak for themselves. When it comes to Udoka and his locker room, very little gets lost in translation.
