Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Report: Celtics targeting Bucks assistant Charles Lee for Joe Mazzulla's staff


The Celtics are looking to add more assistants to Joe Mazzulla's coaching staff, following the report of Sam Cassell agreeing to join earlier this week.

According to Jake Fisher of Yahoo! Sports, Boston is targeting Bucks longtime assistant coach Charles Lee, who was Mike Budenholtzer's top assistant before getting let go last month by Milwaukee. 

Lee also interviewed for several head coaching openings recently including the Pistons, Raptors, Suns and Bucks before they each settled on other candidates.

Per Fisher, while helping a roster like the Celtics win a championship would look great on Lee's resume, he continues to be in talks with other teams at the moment so there is no guarantee that the he'll land in Boston, especially after hiring another top assistant in Cassell. Still, the C's need to fill out their coaching staff in the wake of three assistants including Ben Sullivan -- reportedly departing to join Ime Udoka down in Houston.

Lee, 38, enjoyed a career overseas as a guard for many years after playing college basketball at Bucknell. He's been Budenholtzer top assistant for nearly a decade, spending four seasons with the Hawks before joining "coach Bud" in Milwaukee prior to the 2018-19 campaign.

Another potential target on the Celtics radar for assistants was Stephen Silas, who is on his way to Detroit to join new Pistons coach Monty Williams, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.

Boston's president of basketball operations Brad Stevens spoke about adding to Mazzulla's staff during last week's end-of-season press conference.
"I think one of the things is obviously we had a change in coaches five days before the season started," Stevens told reporters of Mazzulla's promotion this past Thursday. "And we did try to add to the staff at that time. But you're also weighing, like, you've got a lot of people that are really talented in here. I'm sure you'll see, as we've talked about, our assistants this year and our assistants pretty much every year are going to be called and asked by a lot of teams. So we have a good staff, and I think that’s one thing that kind of gets lost in the shuffle, because we did have a lot of people that we lost, too. But the staff we had was good. And we did try.

"Losing Damon in March we again tried. But those timings are tough for people to up and move or up and join a new team that they don’t know anything about or don't know. But that was just to be supplemental, because we believed in the people that were here. So, moving forward we'll have at least -- we'll see how everything shakes itself out with what the staff looks like. But we'll at least have one addition that we'll make now that we have a summer to make it, and then we'll go from there." 

Joel Pavón




Photo used courtesy The Associated Press

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