Report: Celtics Hold 'Emotional,' Unproductive Players-Only Meeting After Smart Called Out Tatum, Brown
BOSTON (CBS) -- The Boston Celtics beat the Orlando Magic on Wednesday night. Their lingering issues, though, seem to remain unresolved.
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported prior to that game that the Celtics held a players-only meeting on Tuesday, after Monday's embarrassing collapse against the Bulls and Marcus Smart's pointed postgame comments about Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown not passing the ball enough.
According to Woj, it was an emotional meeting, but ... it wasn't a great meeting.
"When Boston traveled [Tuesday] to Orlando, I'm told they had a players-only meeting," Wojnarowski reported. "And Marcus Smart, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, they did talk about the collapse against the Bulls and Marcus Smart's comments after the game about those two not passing the ball. I'm told it was emotional at times but in the end perhaps not a terribly productive meeting -- maybe not even beneficial."
Woj added that Smart going public with his issues does not necessarily mean that this is some new problem.
"Listen, these are issues with this team and this group that have been going on for a while," Wojnarowski said. "They changed the president in Boston, they changed the head coach, these issues remain. And now ... Ime Udoka, the first-year Boston head coach, this is a situation that he has to address and help this team work through the way that Brad Stevens -- and it haunted his regime, especially near the end -- [did] last season."
Brown led the Celtics with 28 points in the team's 92-79 win in Orlando. After the game, he was asked for his toughts on Smart's public comments from earlier in the week.
"Obviously, in the midst of trying to win games, it's something that we probably didn't need," Brown said. "But, you know, we all communicate and talk to each other. So we're all trying to find ways to win, and I'm open to any and everything when guys bring it to me, coaching staff. So I'm always watching film, trying to better myself and be a better basketball player and find ways to make my teammates better."
Brown also stated that getting teammates going offensively is part of his job as a leader, and he has growth to do in that area.
On the players-only meeting, Udoka disagreed with Wojnarowski's wording.
"It wasn't really a players-only meeting; we had a team dinner scheduled way before anything happened. So that was planned for some weeks now," Udoka said. "And we gave the players their time before the coaching staff and everybody else came down, so they had about 30 minutes on their own. But it wasn't anything scheduled by them. It was what we already had planned, and like I said, we gave them time to enjoy each other first before we came down 30 minutes later."
That would fit the definition of a players-only meeting, regardless of whether it was scheduled or not.
Nevertheless, the issues of the Celtics -- public or private, real or perceived -- figure to remain in focus for the near future.
