“Ime Udoka goes from playing against Stephen Curry to coaching against him in the NBA Finals”: Warriors MVP and Celtics coach’s rivalry goes more than 10-years back

The Celtics have finally made it past the Conference Finals led by Ime Udoka ‘s brilliant coaching in his first year but will now face the Warriors.

The Boston Celtics come through to the NBA Finals for the first time in 12 years. Five among those 12 years, they got eliminated at the hands of a LeBron James team. And now they face the man who stopped LeBron from having 7 Championships.

Stephen Curry and the Warriors will be in their 6th Finals in 8 years when they take on the Cs while the latter has no players who played in the NBA Finals ever in their life.

And so none of them ever played mighty Warriors of the Playoffs. But there is a man in that team that has a winning record over Steph and the Dubs in regular-season games.

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However, it is not anyone who will be taking the court on Thursday, it’s their Head Coach, the 44-year-old former Spurs and Kings’ small forward who played seven seasons in the league.

Ime Udoka will face Stephen Curry ‘s Warriors for the 9th time, the first six of the previous eight came as a player and Udoka held a 4-2 winning record.

Not much credit has gone to the Boston coach for leading his team to play the best basketball they have played in a while and are at max 7 games away from the ultimate glory. The man knows how to win games against Stephen Curry and Co. and we are talking about the time he played in the league.

During his last two years in the league, with the San Antonio Spurs and Sacramento Kings, Udoka appeared in six games opposite a young and budding point guard and won their career series, 4-2.

Although much has changed since, as that very guard has become one of the game’s greatest ever and is the centerpiece of what the Warriors have done in the past decade, winning 2 MVPs alongside several individual honors.

It’ll be interesting to see how the first-year coach having players with 0 Playoff experience will go against a team whose still intact core of the head coach Steve Kerr and Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson have won 3 Championships.

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