Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens had to be somewhat general when he met with the media after the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft. Stevens can’t discuss the Jrue Holiday or Kristaps Porzingis trades because they aren’t official. However, Stevens was able to give some insight into where the Celtics are heading with those reported deals.
“We knew this was coming, right? This isn’t a huge surprise,” Stevens said about dealing with second apron issues. “We have to make sure we prioritize that flexibility.”
The Celtics front office leader said the team would like to re-sign Al Horford and Luke Kornet but stopped short of guaranteeing they would do so. Stevens repeated multiple times that creating roster flexibility by staying under the second apron would guide the offseason. Despite that, Stevens made it clear that he believes Boston still has a solid foundation in place and that Celtics aren’t rebuilding.
“You look at our roster right now today, we’ve got a lot of really good basketball players that have done a lot of good things in this league, and several of them have done a lot of good things here,” Stevens said.
“I expect us to go out and compete and compete with all we’ve got to be the very best we can. And that will always be the case. We’ll do our best to put the right group together, and, at the same time, regain some flexibility and maximize some asset return. But I do think we’ve got a good group. We’ve got the foundation with Jaylen (Brown) and Jayson (Tatum) and (Derrick) White and Payton (Pritchard) and all those guys that a lot of teams would love to have.”