Even if Jayson Tatum hadn’t torn his Achilles during the second round of the 2025 playoffs, the Celtics planned to shed salary during the offseason, president of basketball operations Brad Stevens confirmed to Jay King of The Athletic.
Boston had operated over the second tax apron in 2023/24 and ’24/25, winning 125 regular season games and a championship during those two years. However, the club made it a priority to get below that line this summer in order to reduce what would have been a record-setting luxury tax bill and to create more flexibility for roster moves going forward.
“First and foremost, what we were staring at was a bill like no one has ever stared at, right?” Stevens said. “So that was not the driver as much as the second apron, but that’s still a significant, significant thing. And our owners — past and present — have always been committed to spending, but it made sense for us, even in that perspective to retool, in my opinion. And then when you’re sitting over those aprons, you just have a lot of restrictions. You know, right now our 2032 (first-round) pick is frozen. That will be unfrozen if we’re under (the second apron) for three of four years.”
According to Stevens, before the Celtics traded away Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis and lost Al Horford and Luke Kornet in free agency, he expressed that he was willing to discuss his plan for the offseason with “anyone who wanted to talk about it,” including coaches and players, per King.
“We were very forthright with everybody,” Stevens said. “We tried to be as proactive (as possible) communicating that, ‘Hey, these things are gonna happen. We’re gonna bring in young, hungry, maybe unproven, maybe a little scarred, but high-character people that are gonna play hard, that want to be a part of something special.’”
That last point – focusing on “high-character” additions – was an important one for Stevens, given all the veteran leadership the team was losing on the trade market and in free agency.
“It was not only that, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta reset and retool,’ but the people we bring into this place — whether through the draft or a trade or a signing — yes, we’re looking for maybe some young, proven, cost-effective people, but at the same time, they have to be high character and they have to be high competitive character,” he explained, per King. “Because if they’re not, we’re just losing too much in that area to sustain it.”
The Celtics are still operating in tax apron territory entering the 2025/26 season — their team salary is roughly $4MM above the first apron threshold and in the tax by about $12MM. But the team has plenty of breathing room below the second apron, giving the front office more freedom to operate on the trade market during the season. Boston can aggregate salaries in a trade this season, for example, after not having the ability to do so last year.
“If you’re going to have to reset and retool, what you’re trying to do is you’re just trying to give yourself a chance to be opportunistic if that presents itself,” Stevens told King. “We lived it. We knew it was coming. And, you know, it wasn’t the most fun summer for a GM or a front office person but we knew that that was part of the pain of A) going all-in in the last couple of years and then B) making sure we give ourselves a chance to continue to be opportunistic around our young core — and our core is still young and still very, very good.”