The Problem: The Boston Celtics payroll this season is 177.9 million, which is 18.1 million above the luxury tax. The NBA’s 2nd apron is 17.5 million above the luxury tax, meaning the Celtics are just barely above the 2nd apron.
The Constraints: This makes it hard for the Celtics to take part in trades. Since they are above the 2nd apron, they can’t take back more salary than they are sending out in trades. This is especially a big problem because they don’t have very many medium-sized contracts. There are the contracts of Jrue Holiday, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Kristaps Porzingis, Derrick White, and Al Horford which likely will not be moved this trade deadline. Other than those players, their highest contract is Payton Pritchard ($4.0 M). This makes it difficult to make trades without sending out 3-4+ smaller contracts. One thing that the Celtics have to their advantage is their $6,202,500 Trade Exception that they have from the Grant Williams sign & trade. Although that’s not a huge number, it should allow them to make a small move that really interests them. Their only other TE is under 2 million, so nothing big. Ok, this is all for this season. This season, a move acquiring a role player with the TE should likely be it for the Celtics. But, next year, there is a whole new challenge.
Next Season: Right now, assuming that Jrue Holiday/Oshae Brissett pick up their player options and Dalano Banton/Sam Hauser have their team options picked up, the Celtics have a whopping payroll of 194.4 Million. That would be 4.4M above next year's second apron with only a 11-man roster, causing a heavy luxury tax penalty with a full roster. In fact, I was curious about how much the number would be, so I used a NBA Luxury Tax Calculator (https://public.tableau.com/views/NBASalaryTaxCalculator/Dashboard1%3Aembed=y&%3AshowVizHome=no&%3Adisplay_count=y&%3Adisplay_static_image=y&%3AbootstrapWhenNotified=true). It says that the salary in addition to the tax payments would cost around $412,350,000 according to recent projections by Adrian Wojnarowski for next season's salary cap and 2nd apron. Yikes! This is where you know that there is a problem (this much salary with a 11-man roster). One of the biggest parts of this is Jaylen Brown’s $49.3M contract. If he has an extremely disappointing postseason, his name will likely be on the trade market. In fact, that could be the case if the Celtics achieve anything short of an 18th Championship.
Options For The Celtics (This Offseason)
Move off of Jaylen Brown’s massive contract. This would clear up the most FUTURE cap space, but it would not provide much immediate relief unless they acquired a big contract that could be easily bought out.
Convince Jrue Holiday to decline his $37.3M player option and accept a team friendly deal. This is the most far-fetched solution, but it’s also the most beneficial to the Celtics. So, it’s definitely worth seeing if it would work. But, Holiday has no reason to say no to all of that money for no reason, especially when he’s already won a title.
Pay the 412M of salary + tax combined. It depends how desperate the owner is to win it all. The owner has already won a ring (2008 Boston Celtics), so he might not want to spend so much money when the Celtics can still be a very competitive team, just with a slightly less shot at winning it all.