Will William Chisholm pay to make sure the Celtics remain championship contenders for years to come?
Will William Chisholm pay to make sure the Celtics remain championship contenders for years to come?Erin Clark/Globe Staff
Now that the Celtics have been sold to private-equity executive William Chisholm for $6.1 billion, there are several issues the new ownership group will have to address.
The Celtics' payroll will swell to a record $223 million next season when the extension of superstar Jayson Tatum begins. Tatum and Jaylen Brown will earn a combined $618 million through the lives of their extensions, and the Celtics are going to live in the second salary-cap apron that will assess even more luxury taxes beginning July 1. They could potentially pay $200 million next season in luxury taxes.
There’s a reason why Brad Stevens decided to extend Kristaps Porzingis, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, and Sam Hauser over the last two years, because the Celtics want to capitalize on their championship window knowing it will not last forever.
Unless this new ownership group has no issue in paying $4 for every $1 spent on free agent contracts, there will have to be a paring-down process. The Celtics are concerned with now, right now. They want to squeeze as many championships out of this current group because financially, the NBA does not encourage dynasties.
Owners envious of the Warriors and their three championships in four years ensured that teams that want to spend heavily on contracts — and there are certainly those owners who are content to spend minimally, make occasional playoff appearances, and benefit from the growing league revenue pot — cannot thrive in the long term without exorbitant luxury taxes.
Will the Chisholm group be willing to live in the second apron, pay Tatum and Brown through the lives of their contracts, and then allow Stevens to continue to build championship-level rosters around them? That will be an expensive endeavor.
The good news is the Celtics will have only two notable free agents this summer, Al Horford and Luke Kornet. Horford could return on a discount deal, depending on how long he wants to continue to play. Kornet is going to garner significant interest, considering his performance this season.
Brown’s contract lasts until 2029 and Tatum’s up in 2030. White, Holiday, and Pritchard’s deals are up in 2028. So Stevens made sure the franchise is secure long term. Chisholm’s group will have to determine whether the Celtics want to continue to build championship contenders around Tatum — and perhaps Brown — for the next decade, and are they willing to pay that price?
The Warriors’ Joe Lacob and Peter Guber were willing to dig deep into their pockets to keep their franchise championship-ready, until fellow owners decided they had seen enough of the Splash Brothers dominating the league. That makes Chisholm’s task even more arduous because the Celtics have competed for championships for most of the past decade.
Chisholm is not going to pay $6.1 billion for the Celtics and remain content with being a tenant at TD Garden. He most certainly will want to build a basketball arena in Boston. A model for Chisholm is Steve Ballmer, who paid $2 billion for the Clippers in 2014 (boy, those were the days, huh?).
Ballmer bought the Clippers knowing the club was the third occupant in Staples Center behind the Lakers and the NHL’s Kings. He developed a long-term plan to build the Clippers a state-of-the-art arena that he funded, and the Intuit Dome opened this season and will host the 2026 NBA All-Star Game.
The best way for any professional sports owner to generate a profit is to own the venue their team plays in. So the clock on the Celtics’ occupancy at TD Garden has begun. Three years ago, the ownership group led by Wyc Grousbeck signed a 15-year extension to their lease that expires in 2036. That gives Chisholm roughly a decade to determine a site and arena plan for Boston. All of the team’s prospective owners were casing the city to determine where the Celtics would play in the future, and it wasn’t TD Garden.
There was a reason why the Celtics were able to fetch $6.1 billion. They are one of the most storied sports franchises that is peaking in value because of the support from Grousbeck, Steve Pagliuca (whose bid to buy the team was denied), and the rest of the ownership group.
Chisholm has purchased a successful but quite expensive team. But to win in the NBA, you have to spend money. Just ask the Kings, Hornets, Pelicans, and Timberwolves about how life is never investing enough money to win and spending decades being NBA afterthoughts, lacking the desire and dollars to compete with the haves.
Being a Celtics owner means spending money, making the best moves to not only compete for titles in the short term but maintain a standard of competitiveness and excellence in the long term. It won’t be easy for Chisholm in today’s NBA, where the salaries are escalating but the barriers for keeping a team at championship levels are increasing because there are some owners who wanted to prevent dynasties and prolonged dominance. There are some owners who mismanage their teams yet want the same compensation as those who run flourishing programs.
Will the Celtics' current core eventually be broken up? Will Chisholm spend the necessary dollars to ensure his newest investment will flourish on the floor for the next two decades, as his predecessors did? The fact Chisholm is a Massachusetts native and Celtics fan is heartwarming, but does that mean he will be willing to view the franchise as a constant championship contender or simply another potentially profitable asset?
We’ll find out in the coming years.
Gary Washburn is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at gary.washburn@globe.com. Follow him @GwashburnGlobe.