What Boston might offer Evan Fournier, and the team that might steal him

Evan Fournier is the microcosm of everything complicated about the Boston Celtics’ season and upcoming offseason. 

On the court, he was promising and had his moments, but was ultimately underwhelming, mostly because of COVID and a general lack of chemistry. 

Off the court, he is connected to the mad scramble to get something back for Gordon Hayward and Danny Ainge’s weird last season. He’s also part of Brad Stevens’ weird first season as President of Basketball Operations, and a free agent who will test the spending appetite of Celtics ownership. 

The decision to re-sign Fournier will be a complicated one, with a lot more at play than you might realize. 

Let’s start with the simple basketball aspect of this, because he is a nice player who can help the team. A full Celtics team would probably use Fournier off the bench, where he can spend more time using his strengths as a creator. With a full training camp and time to be part of things from day one, he can be a key part of a really good team. 

He’s good enough to get Sixth Man of the Year consideration if he comes off the bench next season, so re-signing him makes sense. But running a basketball team isn’t as simple as just handing out contracts. The Celtics find themselves in a pretty unique situation.

It starts with the ownership group, which put spending limits on the team last season. That was understandable, because paying the tax last year would have brought on the much more punitive “repeater tax” a couple of seasons sooner. But things are different, and we’ve never seen how this group will operate with a young team just getting into the meat of their contracts. 

Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown will combine to make at least $53.4 million next season, and more if Tatum makes an All-NBA team. As it stands right now, the Celtics are already a taxpaying team next season without making a single move. They’re going to be expensive and that’s before figuring out what to do with their three open roster spots (two of which could be filled by 2021 draft picks). 

So if the Celtics pay Fournier $20 million next season (don’t freak out, I’m just using a round number right now. We’ll get to his overall value in a minute) the entirety of it will be taxed. In the NBA, taxes work in tiers, and the rate they pay for every dollar they go over the tax goes up every tier. Here’s how that breaks down: 

That’s a total of $45 million in taxes on top of the $20 million they’d pay in salary. Yikes, right?

But this is what they’re going to face now. With their young players taking up about half of the cap on their own, the Celtics are going to have to spend money to surround them with the right talent. Of course, moving Kemba Walker into someone’s cap space if possible or in a deal for multiple players who could subsequently be traded can help alleviate this, but that still doesn’t solve the whole problem. 

Boston’s owners are going to have to spend money if they’re going to put a winning basketball team on the floor and keep their young stars happy, but there will be more time to talk about this stuff down the road. This piece isn't about ownership, it’s about Evan Fournier and what the Celtics might do with him, but the Celtics' financial situation might not leave a whole lot of room for negotiation. 

At the same time, the Celtics can’t hamstring themselves and they have to have an eye on the future. 

Bradley Beal can opt out of his contract after next season or pick up the option and hit free agency in the stacked summer of 2023, joining players like Nikola Jokic & Joel Embiid on the market. 

The Celtics absolutely cannot put themselves in a position to miss out on that free-agent bonanza. Two summers from now, the Celtics will have Tatum and Brown on their roster and, if they've failed to trade for a third star, the cap space to sign the missing piece to a championship contender.

Obviously, they will be working to create a champion before that, but what they won’t do  is make signings now that cut into the money they’ll have then.

So we have a team that’s going to be very focused on how much money they spend and an eye on the free-agent class in two years. At first blush it makes me wonder if they’ll offer him a contract at all. But if they do, it certainly won’t be more than a two-year deal, and it might not offer him much of a raise from the $17 million he got last season. If they do offer a deal, something in the two-year, $35 million range might be their best offer. 

Will that be enough to retain him? That obviously depends on the market. 

Keith Smith of Sportrac.com came up with an interesting scenario on the latest Locked On Celtics podcast. The New York Knicks will have enough cap space to sign Fournier and he could fill an important role for them. However, they also don’t want to go long-term with their contracts for the same reason as Boston (and almost every other team, really), but they can offer what Boston can’t: a huge one-year salary. 

A Knicks one-year offer in the $25 million range would give them help and give Fournier much more money than he would get anywhere else, and the chance to become a free agent again next summer to maybe cash in again. He risks not getting that chance due to a major injury, but the financial gain could be worth it to him. 

Beyond that, Fournier’s agent can negotiate with any team looking to trade for him and give Boston a chance to create another Traded Player Exception. It’s possible the Celtics could trade Walker and Fournier for TPE’s and find a way to trade for some big names before they hit the market. 

Digging into the Fournier situation and Boston’s financial constraints makes me lean more towards Fournier not being back. With Stevens at the helm now, letting Fournier walk or getting a TPE for him doesn’t open the team up to the same level of criticism as if Ainge had lost Fournier. There’s a perception that Stevens is cleaning up a mess, where Ainge would be making more of one with the same result. 

But it doesn’t matter what we think. What matters most is what Tatum and Brown think, and whether the ownership group is taking that into account when it comes to decision making. Stevens will be a good soldier and operate within the set parameters, but it’s the parameters that will ultimately decide where this team goes. 

Here's the Locked On Celtics podcast with the full Evan Fournier discussion: