BOSTON — Jrue Holiday does not want to leave the Boston Celtics. "I think we still have a really, really great opportunity and a great window to be successful and win a championship again," Holiday said on Saturday afternoon. "I think the talent that we have on this team, not only on the court, but the coaching staff all the way up to Brad, has been amazing. So, yeah, the opportunity to win is now, and I still want to be part of that."
With their Game 6 loss to the New York Knicks on Friday night, the defending champions are no longer defending, and the future was sent into a spiral of uncertainty. Even if the Celtics had reached the NBA’s mountaintop for the second year in a row, there were likely to be changes, and now, that remains true.
And with the context of Jayson Tatum’s Achilles injury and potential recovery timeline, even more question marks have been added into the fray.
Despite all that, Holiday believes the Celtics can compete for another championship next year. He doesn't want to go anywhere.
Why are Celtics trades inevitable?
The Celtics have been a second-apron team for two years in a row, and earlier this season, current team owner Wyc Grousbeck stated that he doesn’t think any NBA team in the next 40 years will stay in that spot for three years in a row.
"You can't stay in the second apron," Grousbeck said on The Greg Hill Show. "Nobody will. I predict for the next 40 years of the CBA, no one's gonna stay in the second apron more than two years."
He noted the restrictions that the CBA puts on roster building as the primary reason why.
"It's not the luxury-tax bill," Grousbeck, who will remain the Celtics' CEO and governor until the end of the 2027-28 season, said. "It's the basketball penalties, OK? The new CBA was designed by the league to stop teams from going crazy. And they decided that it's not just good enough to go after the wallets because then the fans are like, 'Hey, find someone who can afford to spend whatever, $500 million a year or whatever it is, like the English Premier League.'
Why could Jrue Holiday be traded?
If the Celtics want to get under the second apron, they will almost certainly have to trade one of the top five salaries on the roster: Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Holiday, or Kristaps Porzingis.
Of those, Jake Fischer of The Stein reported that Holiday and Porzingis are the two most likely candidates.
“The two major salaries that league figures are monitoring in possible future trades: Kristaps Porziņģis and Jrue Holiday,” he wrote.
Though nothing is set in stone, with the context of Tatum’s injury and everything that was already set to (likely) unfold this summer, there could be some massive changes in Boston.