Report: Celtics Hire New Assistant Coach

[Ed Monix]

Udoka has added former Oregon women's basketball assistant coach Mike Moser to his staff.

It won't be Moser's first stint with the Celtics. The Portland, Oregon native, who 247Sports ranked as the top player in the state for the class of 2009, suited up for them at Summer League in 2014 before signing with Lietuvos rytas Vilnius of the Lithuanian Basketball League for the 2014-15 season. After that, he played professionally in Israel, Kosovo, Qatar, Finland, and France.

After Moser's playing career ended, he worked in a player development role with the Dallas Mavericks from 2019-2021.

Moser joins a coaching staff where, like Udoka, Damon Stoudamire, Ben Sullivan, and Aaron Miles have ties to Portland, Oregon.

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Source: Bobby Krivitsky (Sports Illustrated)

[gouki88]

Another guy from the Portland hoops scene. Nice

[Roy H.]

Another guy from the Portland hoops scene. Nice

Somebody needs to tell Ime that he can recruit from outside of Multnomah County. 

I trust Ime, but at the same time, I wonder:  is an assistant coach for Oregon’s women’s basketball team the best we can do?

[MarcusSmartFanClub]

Another guy from the Portland hoops scene. Nice

Somebody needs to tell Ime that he can recruit from outside of Multnomah County. 

I trust Ime, but at the same time, I wonder:  is an assistant coach for Oregon’s women’s basketball team the best we can do?

I agree. At the same time, I bet Ime is doing it because of the relationship. This could make it easier to get to work, or it could be cronyism.

On a side note, I always thought it was weird that Belichick picked up Matt Patricia from some place I’ve already forgotten.

[gouki88]

Another guy from the Portland hoops scene. Nice

Somebody needs to tell Ime that he can recruit from outside of Multnomah County. 

I trust Ime, but at the same time, I wonder:  is an assistant coach for Oregon’s women’s basketball team the best we can do?

Oregon NCAAW is one of the top programmes, and he also spent time in Dallas as a developmental coach. Not a long resume, but working with Rick Carlisle and Kelly Graves is good experience.

[Roy H.]

Another guy from the Portland hoops scene. Nice

Somebody needs to tell Ime that he can recruit from outside of Multnomah County. 

I trust Ime, but at the same time, I wonder:  is an assistant coach for Oregon’s women’s basketball team the best we can do?

Oregon NCAAW is one of the top programmes, and he also spent time in Dallas as a developmental coach. Not a long resume, but working with Rick Carlisle and Kelly Graves is good experience.

Probably so, but we lost a superstar assistant in Hardy.  I would have liked to see the team hire somebody with more of a proven track record.

[MarcusSmartFanClub]

Another guy from the Portland hoops scene. Nice

Somebody needs to tell Ime that he can recruit from outside of Multnomah County. 

I trust Ime, but at the same time, I wonder:  is an assistant coach for Oregon’s women’s basketball team the best we can do?

Oregon NCAAW is one of the top programmes, and he also spent time in Dallas as a developmental coach. Not a long resume, but working with Rick Carlisle and Kelly Graves is good experience.

Probably so, but we lost a superstar assistant in Hardy.  I would have liked to see the team hire somebody with more of a proven track record.

I don’t know much about Ime’s staff besides Damon Stoudemire. I know Ainge wanted Hardy. What makes an assistant a superstar? I would think this would be up to each particular coach/GM. I heard that Ime was a good assistant because he worked for Pop, but is there a way to objectively say one assistant is better than another? Work experience? Win/loss record? Curious about this as I clearly don’t know how to rank assistants.

[Celtics2021]

Another guy from the Portland hoops scene. Nice

Somebody needs to tell Ime that he can recruit from outside of Multnomah County. 

I trust Ime, but at the same time, I wonder:  is an assistant coach for Oregon’s women’s basketball team the best we can do?

Oregon NCAAW is one of the top programmes, and he also spent time in Dallas as a developmental coach. Not a long resume, but working with Rick Carlisle and Kelly Graves is good experience.

Probably so, but we lost a superstar assistant in Hardy.  I would have liked to see the team hire somebody with more of a proven track record.

I don’t know much about Ime’s staff besides Damon Stoudemire. I know Ainge wanted Hardy. What makes an assistant a superstar? I would think this would be up to each particular coach/GM. I heard that Ime was a good assistant because he worked for Pop, but is there a way to objectively say one assistant is better than another? Work experience? Win/loss record? Curious about this as I clearly don’t know how to rank assistants.

Hardy was a Pop assistant who had drawn some head coaching interest the summer Ime was hired, and Udoka was able to give him the lead assistant job.  He was 33 at the time, and is now only 34 — practically the whole league felt it was a matter of when, not if, he because a head coach.  If Quinn Snyder hadn’t surprisingly stepped down we might have had Hardy for one more year, but no more than that.

[W8ting2McHale]

Another guy from the Portland hoops scene. Nice

An obvious move to keep Payton Pritchard happy.

[tenn_smoothie]

We desperately needed a very good offensive mind to revamp Ime's predictable and stagnant half-court sets that had very little off-ball movement - kinda the way Thibbs ran the defense for Doc Rivers. Did Ime not see that ? Surely Brad did. I would go so far as to put half the blame for Tatum and Brown's forced dribble turnovers on the fact that they had few options to go to with the shot clock winding down.

[Vermont Green]

We desperately needed a very good offensive mind to revamp Ime's predictable and stagnant half-court sets that had very little off-ball movement - kinda the way Thibbs ran the defense for Doc Rivers. Did Ime not see that ? Surely Brad did. I would go so far as to put half the blame for Tatum and Brown's forced dribble turnovers on the fact that they had few options to go to with the shot clock winding down.

So I agree with this in principle but I think there are extenuating circumstances that should be considered before declaring that Ime's offense was "predictable and stagnant".  First, the starters only played 34 games together all year.  They were learning a new system from a new coach but were not on the court together all that much.  That is a real challenge for a coach.

The other thing is that the team did improve.  For the first 41 games, the OFFRTG was 108.1 (24th in the league), the second 41 games, 119.2 (best in the league for the second half of the season).  So I don't think it is fair to say that the schemes are bad.  It is true that the team executed them poorly the first half of the season and a whole lot better the second half.  Beyond the stats, it was very clear to the naked eye if you watched the games.  It finally "clicked".  The other teams know what you are going to do.  They have film.  You just need to execute it better than they execute their defense.

Now I don't know a thing about this new assistant coach.  I agree with the point that we should have an assistant who is focused on planning and teaching the offensive schemes.  Teams start with some basic schemes, get them down, and then add nuance over time, as they play for longer together.  Maybe this guy is that coach.  But even if we start the season right where we were at the end of last season, (the best OFFRTG in the league), that should still be fine but of course we should expect them to get better, get tighter this season over last.

I will add that for the second half of the season, we were 28th in the league for free throw attempts.  My thing is we need to get to the line more.