Brad Stevens emphasized after the first round<\/a> of the NBA Draft on Wednesday: regaining more roster flexibility and setting up a path to retain free agents Luke Kornet and Al Horford.<\/p>\nEven after offloading the contracts of Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzi\u0146\u0123is in a pair of trades this week, the Celtics have significant work left to do if they aim to escape the luxury tax entirely. At the moment, they appear hopeful of accomplishing that goal, which would help them initiate the process of resetting the repeater tax. Though they currently sit about $15 million above the luxury tax threshold, they would need to cut more salary than that to position themselves far enough under the threshold also to afford to keep Kornet and Horford. Stevens, who called the veteran big men \u201chuge parts of this organization\u201d on Wednesday night, has stated he would like to re-sign both players.<\/p>\n
Speculation has surrounded Sam Hauser\u2019s future because it likely wouldn\u2019t be difficult to find a taker for his four-year, $45 million contract (which would also fit inside another team\u2019s non-taxpayer mid-level exception), but the Celtics are said to be more focused on avenues that would allow them to hold onto Hauser, who has proven himself as a valuable rotation piece and one of the NBA\u2019s best shooters. The team agreed to acquire Simons and Georges Niang this week, but both players are candidates to be moved before they ever play a game for Boston.<\/p>\n
The Celtics have already had an active offseason, but Stevens set the stage for more activity after the draft when he said he wants to retain Kornet and Horford. The team currently has minimal flexibility under the second apron and would need to cut even more salary to keep both big men while avoiding the tax. With Jayson Tatum \u201ca long, long time\u201d away from even having a projected timeline for his return from a ruptured Achilles, according to Stevens, the Celtics have more incentive to escape the tax now while he is still recovering from his injury. Resetting the harsh repeater tax, which they would do by avoiding the luxury tax for two consecutive seasons, would set them up with more of a runway to spend big in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur owners, old and new, are committed to spending,\u201d Stevens said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Stevens acknowledged, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things that go into these moves and a lot of things that are really important. And, listen, again, it goes back to prioritizing our flexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Celtics knew they would eventually need to face cost-cutting decisions when they put together their 2024 championship roster. They are now dealing with the harsh reality of the NBA\u2019s collective bargaining agreement. Vice president of basketball operations Mike Zarren said, \u201cThe fact of the matter is the new CBA is set up so that teams can\u2019t spend enormous amounts of money for long periods of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a bit of wistfulness always when guys move on,\u201d Zarren said Thursday after the second round of the draft. \u201cBut at the same time, the rules are the same rules for everyone and we\u2019ve got a lot of good players here and a lot of good assets here and we feel like we\u2019ll be set up to compete really, really well in the near future. So that\u2019s always heartening when you know that you\u2019re in that spot. There\u2019s a lot of teams that feel further from that than we do, I\u2019m sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zarren said, \u201cthere\u2019s a banner that will be here forever\u201d because the Celtics were as aggressive as they were in the 2024 offseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sort of realized where we were a couple summers ago that we could take advantage of the situation with the assets we had and the salary situation we were in and the quality of players we already had,\u201d Zarren said. \u201cWe could make a jump before the rules got as punitive as they were going to get. That was a very conscious decision at the time, and it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Photo: Maddie Meyer\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anfernee Simons is smooth with the ball in his hands. He has proven himself as a big-time shot…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3125,1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-20504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-boston-celtics","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114758312732747252","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}