NBA Rumors: Celtics Finalizing Deal For New Top Assistant Coach

The Celtics coaching staff is going to look different in the 2023-24 NBA season.

Joe Mazzulla still will be at the helm in Boston, but his contingency of assistants is in line to change after the organization fell win one short of the 2023 NBA Finals. Sam Cassell, who won a championship as a player with the Celtics in 2008, recently left the Philadelphia 76ers to join Mazzulla’s staff and Charles Lee reportedly will do the same after a five-year run with the Milwaukee Bucks. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Lee is set to become the top assistant coach in Boston.

“The Celtics had long targeted the highly regarded Lee to join Joe Mazzulla’s reshaped coaching staff, waiting out head-coaching searches by Detroit and Toronto to secure him,” Wojnarowski wrote in a column published Sunday. “Lee was a finalist for both jobs, sources said, and was pursued for several top assistant coaching jobs in the offseason before landing with the Celtics.”

Next season will mark Lee’s first coaching in the NBA not under Mike Budenholzer, who was fired by the Bucks in early May after Milwaukee was bounced in the first round of the 2023 playoffs. Lee was on Budenholzer’s staff in Atlanta from 2014 to 2018 before following the two-time Coach of the Year to the Bucks.

Lee, who turns 39 in November, played collegiate basketball at Bucknell but never made it to the NBA. The Maryland native played overseas in Israel, Belgium and Germany between 2006 and 2010 before returning to his alma mater to serve as an assistant coach in 2012.