....can this guy get hired in the middle of serving his suspension that was levied by Boston?
If a head coach is suspended by his "current franchise", that's a team suspension, not a league suspension.
NBA coaches do not have collective bargaining nor a real functional "union", because they garner no "service time" for a league pension/retirement benefits/medical benefits like the players do.
If you are put on paid suspension by your private sector company today, there's nothing stopping you from being hired by the immediate private sector rival to that company. When a player under contract in the NBA shifts from one team to another based on previously owed money, there is an "offset" built into the language of the CBA.
If an NBA team signs Kemba Walker today to a veterans minimum contract ( technically the "Designated Veteran's Minimum Exception") , the Pistons, his last team, is off the hook for a prorated portion of that minimum contract against what they technically owe him. In pure cash. Because Walker's rights are governed by a CBA that has to account for his service time and to regulate the league wide salary system and it's "soft cap"
The league has no such rights with coaches. Udoka had a guaranteed contract with the Celtics, but did not forfeit his entire year long salary in the suspension. The reason for this is that while there may have been full justification in Udoka's individual contract with the Celtics, the League HQ and Adam Silver do not want to give all coaches an incentive to group together and attempt to start collective bargaining on their own. ( The coaches in the NBA have a "union" in name only. It only has advisory powers with coaches and only acts as a nuisance type liason for the league administration. Taking away Udoka's full year pay raises questions if fired coaches are going to get their money in owed years on their contracts, or if teams will just create phantom conditions to not pay them, kind of like what Al Davis did to many of his old coaches like Shanahan Sr. Hence why it didn't happen )
Can Adam Silver, as current NBA commissioner, suspend any active coach in the NBA? Yes, but that has to happen under the entire league's "code of conduct" agreement with anyone who is employed under the NBA banner. That's different than the individual code of conduct language within Udoka's contract with the Celtics. The standards for the league code of conduct are much more broad and leave more room for ambiguity and a potential law suit. And coaches, unlike players, do not have an additional code of conduct type language in an active CBA.
I'm not getting into what Udoka allegedly did or did not do. That's leaning into a "political discussion" Silver and NBA's legal team might have believed they didn't have enough cause under the league's banner for a league suspension. Or wanted to leave this up to the team itself otherwise. Whether or not Silver and the league HQ feel one way or another about Udoka is independent of the contractual / legal realities of the situation. This is still a core logistical process issue, not just one dealing with league public relations and fan retention.
I've covered the basic practical mechanics here and I'll leave it there.
