Changes are on the horizon for the Celtics this summer. They were coming even before Jayson Tatum went down with a torn Achilles, but that injury has changed the calculus even more. Boston will no longer be considered a favorite in the East with Tatum sidelined indefinitely in 2025-26, a sobering thought with serious financial and basketball penalties facing the team this summer after pushing all-in for a repeat in 2024-25.
The sting of the 2025 playoff failure probably hasn’t fully set in yet. Winning a title in 2024 certainly softens the blow, but Boston had an incredible opportunity here with a sensational roster that may be deconstructed this season to a degree that will surprise some people.
Brad Stevens and his staff did a savvy job of maximizing this team’s contending window from a roster construction standpoint in the past two years. They now face their greatest challenge yet though in trying to reconfigure this group around a new challenging CBA and the uncertainty that comes with Tatum’s injury recovery.
Stevens wouldn’t tip his hand on the future in a press conference earlier this week, but that’s because he knows what’s coming. There are several different levels of a reset that could come in theory, but a massive financial step back under the luxury tax is Boston’s most helpful path for the conundrum of how best to retool for the future.
To see why, let’s review where the Celtics were at this past season from a financial standpoint in what was their biggest franchise spend ever.
Celtics 2024-25 spending
Payroll: $193.3 million
Tax penalties: $53.4 million
Total spend: $246.7 million
Now let’s compare that to their current financial commitment for next year
Celtics 2025-26 payroll commitments
Payroll: $227 million to 11 players
Tax penalties: $238 million
Total spend: $465 million
That total projected spend is actually a little lower than the true cost of a full roster, since Boston would ultimately need to fill out a 14-man roster. These numbers are laughable at this point. No team in NBA history has ever spent more than $380 million during a season in payroll and luxury tax penalties. Boston isn’t going to fly past that by over $100 million in a year Jayson Tatum could miss entirely.
In fact, if there is any year that made sense to take a big step back financially, it would be 2025-26 when you look at where the Celtics are at. Boston is set to become a repeater tax team in 2025-26 just as those rates skyrocket under the new CBA. Boston is also dealing with second apron penalties (can’t trade 2032 first round pick, painful trade restrictions) left over from their all-in push this past season.
Needless to say, getting under the second apron line ($207.8 million) is a no-brainer for Boston with Tatum sidelined. In fact, it was going to be a highly like move even if Tatum was healthy, per league sources.
Boston needs to go bigger with a reset than trimming $20 million off the payroll to get under the second apron for both strategic and financial reasons. Instead, they should aim for dipping close to or under the luxury tax ($187.8 million).
Let’s say Boston takes a conservative approach and just ducks under the second apron ($207.8 million) for next season.
2025-25 payroll scenario
Celtics cap sheet at $205 million
Tax penalties: 66 million with repeater
Total spend: $271 million
That’s a far more manageable amount on the surface compared to the current projected amount, but is still a record-breaking spend for the franchise. Does it make sense for ownership to spend that big in a year that Tatum has a reasonable probability of missing entirely or certainly be limited when he does return?
There’s also the strategic element of a more drastic financial reset. Boston will be a repeater tax team for the foreseeable future until they dip below the luxury tax in two of the next four seasons. The financial penalties for being a repeater tax team (a team in the tax during three of the past four years) grew considerably with the new NBA collective bargaining agreement with repeater tax teams paying three times more in tax penalties per dollar spent than non-repeater teams in the tax.
What that means from a Celtics perspective is that if they want to get more bang for their buck later this decade with bigger tax spending, they need to reset the luxury tax repeater clock as soon as possible. There’s no good time to do that necessarily when you want to contend with stars in their primes, but having an All-Star sidelined for up to a year is a pretty good window to start that process.
There are also team building benefits of being under the first apron ($195 million) for Boston next year. Here are a few of the bigger perks:
—Easier trade matching possibilities: More leeway with salary matching rules leads to more flexibility
—Access to mid-level and bi-annual exceptions for free agent signings: These could be valuable for Boston going forward as they lose talent via salary cutting deals.
—Acquiring a player via sign-and-trade in free agency
—Ability to create and use traded player exceptions. Also can use mid-level and bi-annual exceptions as TPEs instead of free agent signings.
—Aggregate players for trade matching purposes
—Signing buyout players that had higher salaries than the mid-level exception.
Sending away talent to get access to these perks is not a clear-cut choice. However, if the age or salaries of certain players isn’t sustainable with your future contending timeline anyway, opening the door to these types of team building options sooner will help.
The tougher question naturally is how exactly could the Celtics brass maneuver their way down below the luxury tax ($187 million) without doing too much damage to the team’s contending future. Here’s a look at Boston’s current payroll situation for the 2025-26 season.
Jayson Tatum: $54.1 million
Jaylen Brown: $53.1 million
Jrue Holiday: $32.4 million
Kristaps Porzingis: $30.7 million
Derrick White: $28.1 million
Sam Hauser: $10 million
Payton Pritchard: $7.2 million
Baylor Scheierman: $2.6 million
Xavier Tillman: $2.5 million
Neemias Queta: $2.3 million
Jordan Walsh: $2.2 million (non-guaranteed)
The cost-cutting challenge begins for Boston with only one team (Brooklyn) currently having the necessary salary cap space to absorb a big deal (over $25 million) without sending out any returning salary. The Nets would certainly want something for renting out their cap space, so Boston could attach a pick or another asset to Kristaps Porzingis or Jrue Holiday in what would effectively be a salary dump if they go that route.
Another path would be patching together a number of cost cutting moves by dealing Holiday or Porzingis for multiple players on smaller deals. Boston could then flip those players again to other teams for more savings or a different return. This would be a far easier path with Holiday since he’s the more proven playoff player in his career.
Even with a move like that, there would still be a lot more work to do to get under the tax and still build a competitive roster. Boston wouldn’t necessarily have to get under the tax ($187 million) before the season starts, but they would have to realistically put themselves within range to do so at the trade deadline if they want to go that route. How Tatum looks at that point in his recovery could factor into that choice of dipping fully under the tax or not.
How Boston strategically goes about that type of cost trimming will be covered here at MassLive in the weeks to come, but it will involve multi-layered moves.
Ultimately, there are obvious ways (move a combination of Porzingis, Holiday, Sam Hauser) to pull off a reset like this. If those paths lead to dead ends or undesired results (taking back bad money, etc.), then more controversial moves (trading Jaylen Brown for a massive haul) would have to be considered as well to take a step like this.
Boston wouldn’t necessarily have to say goodbye to their own free agents in this scenario (Al Horford, Luke Kornet) either if they can create enough space for those cheaper deals with their other cost-cutting moves.
Ultimately, those potential paths will be dissected more closely in the coming weeks, but a simple half measure for next season (getting under the second apron) would not achieve much for this group’s future beyond limited cost savings.
The Celtics could still try to win games in this bigger financial reset scenario and they would still have the talent to be a playoff team barring more injuries. Heck, if Tatum comes back next year, they could have a realistic chance in the playoffs to be competitive in the East. However, their true path back towards contending in 2026 and beyond would ultimately become more sustainable if they take this potentially painful financial step back now.