Matt Barnes, the former NBA player and current co-host of the All the Smoke podcast, created headlines late Thursday night. Those came after Barnes took to social media to lambaste the Boston Celtics‘ decision to suspend head coach Ime Udoka for the entire season for an “inappropriate and consensual” sexual relationship with a female staffer.
“This is a bad look. The Celtics, whoever made this decision, [it] was a terrible decision,” said Barnes. “A whole season? For a consensual situation that not only happens in the NBA but in every single workplace? This was a terrible call, man.”
On Friday, it was revealed that the Celtics knew of the relationship for months, and that Udoka had hidden the devastating news from his fiancée, American actress Nia Long. (The revelations provoked at least one creepy tweet from a United States congressman.)
Barnes, however, took to Instagram Live shortly after that to retract his defense of Udoka. He said he had spoken to somebody who “knew all the details” and that it was a “terrible situation.”
“Last night, without knowing all the facts, I spoke on Ime Udoka’s defense. And after finding out the facts after I spoke, I erased what I posted because this situation in Boston is deep; it’s messy; it’s one hundred times uglier than any of us thought. That’s why I deleted what I posted.”
Barnes said that “it’s not [his] place” to expose further details of the affair but that “if it comes out, it comes out.”
The NBA world was quick to react to the retraction:
if matt barnes can't condone what you've done, its bad https://t.co/4QZ5RQNTli
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) September 23, 2022
Time will tell if the Udoka situation is worse than it appears.