Ime Udoka wants Celtics to target veteran scorer in free agency: ‘Consistent scoring off the bench is key’

The Celtics’ run to the NBA Finals came via many key contributions from the team’s second unit. However, that group faltered against the Warriors when the team needed them most, with the team’s usual bench rotation of Grant Williams, Payton Pritchard and Derrick White shooting a combined 2-of-19 from the field in Games 5 and 6 of the 4-2 series loss.

The Celtics have the ability to bring that entire group back for next season with all three players under contract but Ime Udoka seems eager to find some additional scoring depth to play with them next year.

“Consistent scoring off the bench is a huge key,” Udoka said. “You’d like to look at certain positions, and I think we have a lot of things covered, but can always have additions with the trade exceptions we have. So we’ll take a look at a certain amount of names that are available, possibly, and see if we can fit anything in numbers wise. But there are some things to address and I think the thing that stood out a little bit in the Finals was our bench scoring, kind of solidifying that with a veteran, veteran roles off the bench.

“We had some young guys we really relied on, Payton, Derrick, Grant, and those guys grew tremendously throughout the year, and we need to see more of that, but certain positions and roles need to be touched on and we have a good amount of names that we’re looking at and hopefully some of those things work out for us.”

The Celtics have the a number of tools at their disposal including trade exceptions and the taxpayer mid-level exception ($6.3 million) to pursue some of those upgrades. However, Udoka is a believer in a lot of the team’s offseason improvement coming from within.

“We continue to try to improve through free agency, trades, draft, those things, we do understand the biggest part of that growth will be from within,” Udoka said. “Guys showed tremendous progress throughout the season, and I think this offseason with us, continuing to work with them, hammering home some certain points and those guys improve on the things they did throughout the season, we can even have more coming into next season.”

NBA free agency kicks off on June 30th at 6 p.m. ET.