Nets hiring Celtics’ Ime Udoka as head coach after Steve Nash firing

All signs point to Ime Udoka as the next coach of the Brooklyn Nets.

The Nets fired Steve Nash on Tuesday amid a disappointing 2-5 start that has been marred by off-court drama, including Kyrie Irving’s social media promotion of an anti-Semitic film. The team’s interim head coach is Jacque Vaughn.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and The Athletic’s Shams Charania both reported that the Nets plan to hire Udoka to replace Nash.

Udoka was suspended by the Celtics for at least a year after an investigation revealed that he had an affair with a female subordinate. Charania reported in The Athletic that Udoka also made “unwanted comments” to the woman, and Wojnarowski reported that the coach used “crude language.”

Tuesday, Wojnarowski added that the Celtics would permit Udoka to leave for a different job.

Udoka was an assistant on the Nets two years ago; last year, in his first season as Celtics head coach, Boston reached the NBA Finals.

In October, speaking on ESPN’s “First Take,” Stephen A. Smith theorized that one of the reasons the Celtics suspended Udoka rather than firing him was that they were worried he would become the head coach of the rival Nets.

“I believe part of the reason he was suspended, not fired, is because the Boston Celtics did not want him to end up in Brooklyn,” Smith said. “I believe that Ime Udoka, had he gotten fired, with all the stuff that happened — remember, the operative words were ‘consensual relationship, violation of organization policy!’ So because it’s that, it’s about your behavior, which we don’t endorse, as opposed to a crime.

“And because there was nothing that was put out there that said it was a crime, I believe that if Ime Udoka had been fired by the Boston Celtics, the Brooklyn Nets would’ve fired Steve Nash and brought that brother back and he would be the coach for the Brooklyn Nets right now. That’s how emphatic I am about this.”

While Smith said that this was speculation and not sourced reporting, it now looks like there may have been fire where there was smoke.