Actress Nia Long has finally shared her reaction to the initial news of suspended Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka’s misconduct in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Brande Victorian. The partner of Udoka for over a decade when the scandal that led to his season-long suspension broke, Long has been largely quiet about the situation until now.
Amid the concern over female employees of the Celtics organization getting dragged into the affair, Long shared that the team did not reach out to her, and highlighted the impact the way the news was handled impacted her and Udoka’s son Kez negatively.
“I think the most heartbreaking thing about all of this was seeing my son’s face when the Boston Celtics organization decided to make a very private situation public,” she related.
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Several months removed from the scandal breaking into public view, Long shared that those wounds still have not entirely healed.
“He still has moments where it’s not easy for him. If you’re in the business of protecting women — I’m sorry, no one from the Celtics organization has even called to see if I’m OK, to see if my children are OK. It’s very disappointing.”
“I literally felt like my heart had jumped out of my body,” she explained.
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However, the actress shared how the support she received on social media buoyed her in that difficult moment.
“(W)hat I found was this tribe of women and men who were standing up for me in a way that felt like I was in this bubble of protection, and that was very comforting.”
Long declined to specifically address the status of her relationship with Udoka or the behavior that triggered the scandal, per Victorian.
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