The NBA offseason is officially off and running, and the Boston Celtics have taken center stage. One day after agreeing to trade Jrue Holiday to the Portland Trail Blazers, the Celtics have reportedly come to terms on a three-team deal that will ship Kristaps Porziņģis to the Atlanta Hawks.
Two summers ago, Holiday and Porziņģis were headline acquisitions for a Celtics team that was looking to finally get over the hump and win a championship for the first time since 2008. In their very first season with the club, Holiday and Porziņģis helped them do just that, as the Celtics defeated the Dallas Mavericks to win the 2024 Finals.
Now, they’re gone. Why? Why did the Celtics, who won 60-plus games in each of the last two seasons, tear down a contender as soon as possible this summer?
Significant financial concerns
From the minute the Celtics traded for Holiday and Porziņģis in 2023, then signed Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and Derrick White to big extensions, they knew they had a two-year window before the proverbial bill would come due.
Prior to the trades, every key contributor from last season’s team was under contract for next season besides Al Horford and Luke Kornet. Without them, the Celtics already had over $227 million in guaranteed contracts on the books. Due to luxury-tax penalties, the total cost to keep the roster together would have been more than $500 million.
Before last season was even over, there were reports that the Celtics were going to shed salary this summer rather than have the most expensive team ever.
By trading Holiday for Anfernee Simons and Porziņģis for Georges Niang, the Celtics shed nearly $28 million in salary and got under the dreaded second apron of the luxury tax. All told, between salary and tax payments, the total cost for the Celtics roster next season — barring any further moves — has dropped from $512 million to $274 million, according to cap expert Yossi Gozlan.
Avoiding basketball penalties
As much as the Celtics wanted to save money this summer, the bigger benefit of getting under the second apron of the luxury tax was avoiding further basketball penalties.
“It’s not the luxury-tax bill, it’s the basketball penalties,” former owner Wyc Grousbeck said in March. “The new CBA was designed by the league to stop teams from going crazy and they decided that it’s not good enough to just go after the wallets because then the fans are like ‘hey, find someone who can afford to spend whatever — $500 million per year or whatever it is.”
“The basketball penalties mean it’s even more of a premium now to have your basketball general manager be brilliant and lucky because you’ve got to navigate, because you can’t stay in the second apron,” Grousbeck continued. “Nobody will. I predict for the next 40 years of the CBA no one is going to stay nobody is going to stay in the second apron more than two years.”
The Celtics have been above the second apron for the last two seasons, and have already dealt with restrictions, which, per Bobby Marks, include the inability to:
- aggregate contracts sent out in a trade;
- use more than 100% of the traded player exception;
- send out cash;
- use a preexisting trade exception;
- sign a player waived that had a salary of at least $14.1 million
Because the Celtics were over the second apron this season, their 2032 first-round pick has been frozen, and they are unable to trade it. If they would have been over the second apron again next season, their 2033 first-round pick would have also become frozen.
Now that the Celtics are under the second apron, none of the aforementioned restrictions, such as aggregating contracts in a trade, apply to them. That gives president Brad Stevens significantly more flexibility over the rest of the summer and into next season.
Tatum’s Achilles injury
Late in Game 4 of the Celtics’ second-round series against the New York Knicks, Jayson Tatum collapsed to the ground while chasing a loose ball and grabbed for his right leg. Less than 24 hours later, he had already undergone surgery to repair a torn right Achilles tendon. A few days after that, the Celtics were eliminated from the playoffs.
The Celtics have not released an official timeline for Tatum’s recovery, but he is going to miss the majority of next season, if not all of it. Tatum’s injury not only cemented the fact that they were going to get under the second apron this summer, but changed the short- and long-term calculations for Stevens.
If Tatum was healthy, the plan this summer would have been relatively straightforward: get under the second apron while remaining as competitive as possible. In that scenario, maybe they only trade one of Holiday or Porziņģis and find more creative ways to save money.
Tatum being out made it easy to move on from both Holiday and Porziņģis, and opens up so many more possibilities. The boldest of which would be blowing everything up in order to take a gap year in 2025-26, earn a top pick in the 2026 NBA Draft and clear the books for a full reset once Tatum is healthy again in 2026-27.
To that point, it’s worth taking note of Shams Charania’s report late on Tuesday, in which he said that rival teams are calling the Celtics to gauge the availability of Jaylen Brown and Derrick White. The Celtics have set a “high price threshold” for both players and would prefer to keep them, per Charania, but are receiving “massive offers.”
Will another team be able to overwhelm the Celtics with an offer they cannot refuse? We’ll have to wait and see.
A new owner
Shortly after winning the title last season, the Celtics and the Grousbeck family made a stunning announcement: the team was going up for sale. In March, 23 years after the Grousbecks bought the franchise for $360 million, they sold it to Massachusetts native Bill Chisholm for what was then a record-breaking price of $6.1 billion.
“I bleed green,” Chisholm told ESPN after the sale was announced. “I love the Celtics. When this opportunity came up, I couldn’t pass it up. Wyc [Grousbeck] has done an incredible job running this franchise. So why would you mess that up? The team is in a great place right now, and I’m very sensitive to that. Wyc, Brad [Stevens] and Joe [Mazzulla] have done amazing jobs and that’s all goodness that we want to continue.”
“My approach is to win and raise banners,” Chisholm continued. “That’s in the near term and the long term. I’ve had a couple of sit-downs with Brad and it’s been about aligning our goals, and extending the window of this team.”
Chisholm has said all of the right things, but he’s not stupid. The Celtics are not a title contender without Tatum, and there’s zero reason to pay over $500 million and assume even further basketball penalties to maintain a team that doesn’t really have a chance to win it all. Especially right after Chisholm (and his partners) just paid over $6 billion to buy the franchise.
The big question now is whether Chisholm will push for more cost savings even though the Celtics are under the second apron. As of now, they’re about $7.4 million over the first apron and $15 million over the luxury tax, including their first-round pick. They will select No. 28 overall in the 2025 NBA Draft on Wednesday.
Shipping out Sam Hauser, who makes $10 million, would be an easy way to shed some more money, but anything beyond that is either going to be largely meaningless or franchise-altering. Trying to predict Stevens’ next move is usually a fool’s errand, but it does feel like he has a few more tricks up his sleeve.
Watch all your favorite Amazon Prime Video Sports broadcasts live and free. Get access to NFL, NBA, NASCAR, WNBA, and more – all included with your Prime membership!