The list of Celtics champions who will be playing for new teams in 2025-26 already includes Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis.
Brad Stevens hopes Al Horford and Luke Kornet aren’t added to that list.
Horford and Kornet are Boston’s top two impending free agents, and Stevens said Wednesday that re-signing both big men is an offseason priority.
“I think the biggest thing is, as you look at the rest of the team and what we’re trying to do, there is no question our priorities would be to bring Al and Luke back,” the Celtics’ president of basketball operations said in his draft-night news conference. “Those guys are huge parts of this organization. They’re going to have, I’m sure, plenty of options all over the place, and that’s well-deserved, but I think that would be a priority. At the same time, I don’t want to put pressure on them. It’s their call ultimately. But, yeah, we would love to have those guys back.”
The 39-year-old Horford is a universally respected leader in the Celtics’ locker room, and he remained an effective player in his 18th NBA season, starting 42 games and averaging 9.0 points, 6.2 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 0.9 blocks per appearance. Some of his top performances came against elite opponents, including Giannis Antetokounmpo, LeBron James and Nikola Jokic.
“There should be a separate stat sheet for guys like him because of the type of stuff that he does,” head coach Joe Mazzulla said after Horford blocked five shots in a first-round playoff win over Orlando. “… (He’s) just an unbelievable competitor.”
Kornet, a 29-year-old journeyman, is coming off the best season of his winding NBA career. The 7-footer firmly entrenched himself as the third man in Boston’s frontcourt rotation behind Porzingis and Horford and ranked near the top of the NBA in a slew of advanced metrics, including offensive rating, net rating, assist-to-turnover ratio, effective field-goal percentage and true shooting percentage. He also was a highly effective pick-and-roll partner for Jayson Tatum.
As Stevens noted, both players should have strong markets this offseason, and both were noncommittal about their futures in Boston during end-of-season news conferences last month. Retaining at least one would go a long way toward stabilizing a position group that lost its most dynamic member when Porzingis was traded to the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday.
Trading Porzingis and Holiday afforded the Celtics some much-needed financial flexibility, theoretically increasing the amount they can offer Horford and Kornet. Horford earned $9.5 million in salary this past season. Kornet played on a one-year, veteran-minimum deal worth $2.1 million.
The only Celtics bigs currently under contract for 2025-26 are Neemias Queta, who saw action in 62 games with six starts this season, and seldom-used Xavier Tillman, who played sparingly as one of the last players on Boston’s bench.
Torrey Craig, Drew Peterson and Miles Norris round out Boston’s crop of internal free agents. Craig fit in well in the locker room as a trade-deadline addition but couldn’t crack Mazzulla’s postseason rotation. Peterson and Norris were two-way players who spent most of their time in the G League.
Teams can begin negotiating with external free agents on June 30.