The Nets were pressured into staying away from Ime Udoka before hiring Jacque Vaughn

When the Brooklyn Nets fired Steve Nash earlier this month, the franchise already seemed to have its next head coach picked out. Ime Udoka — the suspended Celtics coach banished from the organization for a year after an affair with a team employee — was reportedly set to be hired by Brooklyn as Nash’s replacement.

Not anymore. Voices around the NBA reportedly pressured the Nets and owner Joe Tsai to go in another direction at head coach with the Nets already embroiled in the Kyrie Irving antisemitism controversy. On Wednesday, the Nets made it official: former assistant coach Jacque Vaughn, and not Ime Udoka, will be the franchise’s head coach the rest of the season. Vaughn had been the team’s interim coach since Nash was let go.

Vaughn will reportedly be the head coach for next season, too.

We know a few things about the Nets’ interest in Udoka. The suspended Celtics coach was who both Kevin Durant and GM Sean Marks wanted to replace Nash in Brooklyn, according to long-time NBA insider Marc Stein. Hours after Nash was fired, Udoka was set to be hired by the Nets as their new head coach, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania. As the Irving controversy continued to swirl around the franchise, “strong voices” inside the league pushed the Nets to hire anyone else but Udoka.

Now Vaughn will be the Nets’ head coach for the rest of the 2022-2023 season.

The details around Udoka’s suspension remain a bit mysterious. Udoka has yet to tell his side of the story about his actions beyond a three sentence statement shortly after the news dropped. We know he had an affair with at least one woman on the Boston Celtics’ staff. The Celtics said Udoka violated the team’s code of conduct multiple times. The closest we got to real details of what happened was this bit from Charania:

Some members of the Celtics organization first became aware of the relationship in July, sources said. At that time, team leadership was led to believe by both parties that the relationship was consensual. But sources said that the woman recently accused Udoka of making unwanted comments toward her — leading the team to launch a set of internal interviews.

It’s possible the Nets did more digging into what really happened with Udoka, and decided they didn’t need more bad PR. It’s possible Adam Silver or some other high-ranking league official told the Nets they shouldn’t (or couldn’t?) hire Udoka while he was in the midst of a sex scandal as the team was still dealing with the fallout from Irving sharing antisemitic propaganda on social media.

Charania has more details of why the Nets moved off from Udoka:

The Nets changed course from their initial plan to hire Udoka due to several factors, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the decision-making told The Athletic. These factors include an investigation and due diligence process by the Nets into the suspended coach taking longer than initially expected, the outcry after word of their plan became known to people outside and inside the organization and the short- and long-term question marks around the team’s ability to contend in the Eastern Conference as a result of the indefinite suspension of Irving.

If the league did influence the Nets’ decision to not hire Udoka, this isn’t the first time it has allegedly mettled in a team’s business. The NBA reportedly helped push out Sam Hinkie and insert the Colangelos for the Philadelphia 76ers when the team’s obvious tanking became a black eye for professional basketball.

Either way, the Nets’ apparent decision to hire Udoka was incredibly bold and controversial. It seemed too ridiculous to be true when the news first broke, given that they were already dealing with the Irving situation. Now we know Udoka won’t be the Nets’ head coach this season after all.

Brooklyn is 2-2 under Vaughn since firing Nash.