The Boston Celtics will kick off the 2022-23 NBA season tonight against the Philadelphia 76ers with Joe Mazzulla at the helm. Ime Udoka's yearlong suspension will have officially begun. The dust has mostly settled after the stunning news broke last month but there is still an air of mystery around exactly what happened and, more pertinently, why Boston didn't just fire him.

Whatever he did was clearly unacceptable to the Celtics and it is nearly impossible to imagine a universe in which he comes back this time next year like nothing ever happened. The best guess we've got is that Udoka's actions may not have been enough to qualify as firing for cause, which would've put the franchise on the hook for the rest of his guaranteed money in his contract, but there is no way to confirm that without knowing exactly what went down. And we will probably never know that.

Stephen A. Smith, at the forefront of the whole debacle for a variety of reasons, had his own idea as to why Boston handed down a suspension and not a fine. He explained it today on First Take: the Celtics knew if they fired Udoka, he would've ended up in Brooklyn with the Nets, which would create a big problem for their championship hopes.