The Charlotte Hornets pried away first-year head coach Charles Lee from the Boston Celtics in May, and the Eastern Conference foe continued by welcoming a few more newcomers to their staff on Wednesday.
Charlotte announced the hirings of Blaine Mueller and Jermaine Bucknor after finalizing their 2024-25 staff, the first selected by Lee.
Mueller spent last season debuting as the head coach of the G-Leauge affiliate Maine Celtics, going 21-13 and finishing a win shy of defeating the Oklahoma City Blue in the Finals. Mueller previously worked with Lee during his stint with the Milwaukee Bucks, which played a role in landing a job last offseason in Boston. He’ll now return to an NBA sideline to work directly with the Hornets as an assistant in Lee’s hand-picked staff.
Bucknor, who played 15 years professionally overseas in Germany and Canada among other spots, landed his first NBA gig with the Celtics as an assistant in head coach Joe Mazzulla’s staff. Routinely, Bucknor worked with the group of Boston’s little-known coaching staff — Craig Luschenat, Phil Pressey, Tyler Lashbrook, and Ross McMains — by getting reserve unit role players like Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser, Xavier Tillman and Neemias Queta ready hours before tip-off.
Lee and Bucknor will remain alongside each other on Charlotte’s sideline next season, although that trio of ex-Celtics coaches now joining the Hornets isn’t the only loss Boston’s endured this offseason.
Jeff Van Gundy, who joined the Celtics as a senior consultant and was offered a coaching role to remain with Boston in 2024-25, accepted an assistant job with the Los Angeles Clippers in June.
The Celtics have already gotten started in filling the coaching staff voids left from their departures, first by hiring God Shammgod Jr. as a developmental coach — former Mazzulla teammate at Fairmont State.
