The fallout from the Ime Udoka scandal continues for the Boston Celtics.
Amanda Pflugrad, who covers the Celtics for NBC Sports Boston, excoriated the organization after women employees were the subject of speculation on social media after it was revealed that Udoka had an affair with a female staffer, telling the team that “you need to change. ”
“I think I’d be doing everyone — and every female — in the Celtics organization a disservice if I didn’t step on this,” Plufgrad said. “The last few days have been very hard in terms of emotions, ranging from heartbreak, sadness, defeat at some times and anger and humiliation. Social media felt that it was completely fine to take innocent people’s names in our organization, and their personal photos, and put them out there for speculation. That damages careers. That damage reputations.
“Every woman in our organization has worked extremely hard to get where she is at, and she deserves and earns everything that she has right now. For things in the Celtics, and what we’re doing moving forward, things do need to change. You need to stand up, support us and hear us.”
Pflugrad also crushed social media speculation on her own Twitter account last week.
“As a female of the Celtics organization, watching these last few days unfold has been heartbreaking,” she tweeted Friday. “Seeing uninvolved people’s names thrown around in the media, including mine, with such carelessness is disgusting. This is a step backwards for women in sports who have worked hard to prove themselves in an industry they deserve to be in.”
Brad Stevens, the Celtics’ president of basketball operations, got emotional discussing this matter in a press conference on Friday.
“The only thing that I would like to say is we have a lot of talented women in our organization, and I thought yesterday was really hard on them,” Stevens said. “Nobody can control Twitter speculation — rampant bulls–t — but I do think that we as an organization have a responsibility that we’re there to support them now because a lot of people were dragged unfairly because of that.”
To be sure, the Celtics organization was put in an impossible situation by the whole scandal. The team could not name the employee — a non-public figure who who reportedly received “unwanted comments” from the now-suspended Celtics coach. It also opened itself up to rampant speculation from dark corners of fans and media.
TMZ reported over the weekend that the woman with whom Udoka had an affair was a travel logistics coordinator — and had even booked hotels for Udoka’s fiancee, actress Nia Long.
Long was reportedly blindsided by the news of the affair; she and Udoka, who have been together since 2010 and share a two-year-old son, had apparently been house hunting in Boston right before the news broke.
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