"NO TURN ON RED?" There are no championship parades for payroll flexibility like the one Celtics fans enjoyed after the team won the NBA title last year.
"NO TURN ON RED?" There are no championship parades for payroll flexibility like the one Celtics fans enjoyed after the team won the NBA title last year.Stan Grossfeld/Globe Staff
Picked-up pieces while cursing the first person who uttered “payroll flexibility” …
Remember way back in June 1983 when Red Auerbach traded lumbering center Rick Robey to the Phoenix Suns for controversial guard Dennis Johnson? That was in the good old days when Red’s cigar was just a cigar and an NBA trade was just a trade — a debatable swap of talents.
I miss those days. Sure, there were often forgettable draft picks tossed into the deals, and occasionally some petty cash changed hands, but for the most part it was talent for talent and fans enjoyed making a case that the Celtics had maybe given up too much or (more likely with Red) won the deal and acquired a better player who’d help win another banner. Hello, DJ.
We loved it. Through the years, the Celtics traded Paul Westphal for Charlie Scott, Cedric Maxwell for Bill Walton, and let’s not forget Red’s Mormon grandson, Danny Ainge, swapping Al Jefferson, Ryan Gomes, Gerald Green, Theo Ratliff, Sebastian Telfair, and two future first-rounders for some guy named Kevin Garnett in 2007. A horse for five ponies and two picks. It was beautiful. It was sports. It was fun.
Fast forward to June 2025 when NBA players’ contracts are moved in order for teams to get under the dreaded “second apron.” Successful, stable rosters are broken up in the name of mid-level exceptions, supermax players, frozen first-round picks, expiring deals, matching salaries and TPE (traded player exceptions) as basketball operations bosses bow at the almighty altar of luxury tax penalties.
Got all that?
Neither do I.
All you need to know is that NBA salaries are really large and the league legislates against dynasties. Red couldn’t win eight championships in a row in this century. The league won’t allow it. This is 2025 and teams trade portfolios instead of playmakers.
And that is why Celtics fans woke up to read painful headlines on back-to-back days this week. First it was fan favorite Jrue Holiday (owed $100 million over the next three years) going to the Trail Blazers for guard Anfernee Simons and two second-round picks. We were immediately warned that Simons — a fine shooter and poor defender, but a full decade younger than Holiday — might be flipped to another team before the end of the summer.
Fans were still shaking that one off when Kristaps Porzingis was dealt to the Hawks in a three-team deal (also including the Nets), that reduced Boston’s luxury tax obligations by about $220 million. In addition to the money relief, the Celts also came away with forward Georges Niang and a second-round pick. Whee!
We knew this was coming and now it is happening. New Celtics owners just saved almost a quarter of a billion in future salary and penalty payments, while the team got younger and able to improve thanks to newfound payroll flexibility.
Swell.
So now what are you supposed to do with that 2024 championship poster featuring Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Al Horford, Holiday, and Porzingis?
Holiday and Porzingis are gone. Sam Hauser will be next to go because he makes too much money. Horford is a 39-year-old free agent. Luke Kornet is a free agent.
Oh, and as you already know, Tatum shredded his Achilles’ and is lost for most (if not all) of next season.
So it turns out that that wonderful group came away with only one banner. Just like the “Second Big Three” of Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen.
One championship. When it felt like they were bound for multiple rings.
It used to be possible to win more — back in the days before LeBron took his talents to South Beach, forever scarring NBA owners and putting them on a path to a stifling collective bargaining agreement that promotes parity and punishes smart teams willing to spend (like the Celtics).
Larry Bird and Co. went to five Finals in the 1980s and won three. John Havlicek, Jo Jo White, and Dave Cowens won two championships and had a 68-win season in a three-year-span in the ’70s. And, of course, Bill Russell and Red combined for 11 rings in 13 seasons between 1957-69.
That’s all gone now. It went away with the low-post game, the pick-and-roll, the give-and-go, and the white picket fence.
And as the Celtics descend to the big middle, we’re left with a less interesting league that covets 3-pointers and payroll flexibility.
⋅ Quiz: 1. The Pacers became the latest NBA team to fail to win a Finals Game 7 on the road. Name the four teams that have done it; 2. Name eight men named Joe who won at least one baseball MVP award (answers below).
⋅ John Henry, who also owns the Globe, and Craig Breslow really showed Raffy Devers, didn’t they? Winners of five straight when the deal went down, the Sox went 3-6, ranked 30th in OPS and struck out more than any MLB team in their first nine games after trading Devers. Their runs per game average dropped nearly two full runs. Without Devers, Boston’s DHs batted .182, with a .270 OPB, and slugged .273. In those nine games, the DHs had one extra-base hit, walked thrice, and struck out a dozen times. Going into the weekend, the Sox were two games under .500, closer to last place than first.
⋅ Red Sox jersey No. 11 is free again. Baby Boomers remember 11 as the Sox number of Frank Malzone and Luis Aparicio. Bill Mueller and Clay Buchholz wore it for world champion Red Sox teams in this century. Devers had it from 2017 until he was traded. “Carita” is wearing No. 16 for San Francisco, only because the Giants retired Carl Hubbell’s No. 11 in 1944.
⋅ Devers is the Giants’ best hitter since Barry Bonds. Here’s a comparison of Bonds’s first eight big league seasons matched up against where Devers stood when he was dealt to the Giants last week:
Bonds — 4,123 AB … .283 BA … 222 HR … 679 RBIs.
Devers — 4,074 AB … .279 BA … 215 HR … 696 RBIs.
⋅ Devers clearly deserves a lot of the scorn he’s received in Boston, but some of the post-trade smearing was out of bounds. Nobody believes Devers cared about Kristian Campbell taking grounders at first base. Similarly, there was too much noise about Devers poisoning teammates in the clubhouse. He certainly set a poor example at the end, but largely kept to himself and had little impact on anyone else. Too many folks who’ve never been in a locker room made a big deal about Sox players not rushing to Devers’s defense to speak up for him. This is a universal truth in professional sports. When you’ve gone, you’re gone.
⋅ Can we agree that David Ortiz should no longer be taken seriously? Before taking to X to display photos of his unreturned texts from Raffy, Ortiz said, “Devers disrespected the Red Sox and his teammates by arriving at spring training out of shape.”
⋅ Intent on cramming in more commercials, greedy NESN continues to miss action at the beginning or Red Sox innings.
⋅ On the plus side for NESN, we had intrepid sideline reporter Jahmai Webster renting a kayak to broadcast live from the choppy waters of McCovey Cove.
⋅ Does any professional athlete break more bones than Chris Sale? While with the Red Sox, he broke his pinkie trying to stop a line drive off the bat of Aaron Hicks, suffered a rib stress fracture throwing a pitch, and broke his wrist falling off his bicycle. Sale cracked a rib diving for a ground ball against the Mets last week. I think he needs more cheeseburgers.
⋅ The Red Sox were swept in their May series in Detroit and won’t see the Tigers again until the final three games of the season at Fenway. No one in baseball is sleeping on the Tigers. Detroit went 31-11 down the stretch last season and arrived at this weekend 51-31, tied with the Dodgers for the best record in baseball and good for a huge lead in the AL Central. Managed by the underrated A.J. Hinch, the young Tigers are hoping to bring Detroit its first World Series victory since 1984.
⋅ I guess Kevin Durant will go down as a top-20, all-time NBA talent (many have him higher), but one wonders about a guy who hand-picked his only championship team (two rings with the Warriors), then kept team-shopping over the second half of his career. The last original Seattle SuperSonic (the Sonics became the Thunder in 2008), Durant has gone from Oklahoma City to Golden State, Brooklyn, Phoenix, and now lands with Ime Udoka’s Houston Rockets. Good fit. The Rockets have everything but a shooter, but Durant hasn’t made it past the second round of the playoffs since 2019.
⋅ Gleaned this nugget from Mike Sielski’s “Magic In The Air” book on the history of the slam dunk: In the summer of 1968, after graduating from high school in Roosevelt, N.Y., Julius Erving dunked over Bob Beamon in the middle of a pickup game at the Kennedy Rec Center in Hempstead. “The whole gym fell on the floor,” reported Doc’s high school teammate, Leon Saunders. A couple of months later, Beamon won the gold medal in the long jump at the Mexico City Olympics with a jump of 29 feet, 2½ inches, a world record that lasted 23 years. “[Beamon] probably would have dusted Julius in the long jump,” Saunders told Sielski. “But going straight up? That was a different story.”
⋅ Hope American Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley puts himself on the team. The 39 year-old Bradley, nephew of former Westford Academy Ghost (and Hall of Fame golfer) Pat Bradley, was named captain last summer and is plotting to take the Cup back from Europe at Bethpage Black in September. If he doesn’t qualify in the points standings (it’ll likely be close), Bradley would do well to make himself a captain’s pick.
⋅ Former St. Sebastian’s basketball star AJ Dybantsa, an incoming freshman at Brigham Young projected as the No. 1 pick in next year’s NBA Draft, is scheduled to play against UConn at the New Garden on Nov. 15.
⋅ RIP Scott Miller, a terrific baseball scribe and wonderful man who died from cancer last weekend. A pillar of integrity and grace, Miller’s latest book, “Skipper: Why Baseball Managers Matter and Always Will,” is fresh off the presses and a great read.
⋅ Quiz answers: 1. 1968-69 Celtics vs. Lakers, 1973-74 Celtics vs. Bucks, 1977-78 Bullets vs. SuperSonics, and 2015-16 Cavaliers vs. Warriors; 2: Joe Cronin, Joe Medwick, Joe Gordon, Joe DiMaggio (3), Joe Torre, Joe Morgan (2), Joe Mauer, Joey Votto.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at daniel.shaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him @dan_shaughnessy.