When Damian Lillard was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks yesterday, people around the league, especially in Boston, had two reactions.
1: Holy (expletive deleted… maybe more than one)
2: How do we trade for Jrue Holiday?
It was immediately reported that Portland was going to turn around and flip Holiday, so he’ll be on the move somewhere. And unlike the Lillard pursuit, there is expected to be widespread interest for a high-level defender who shot 39.5% from deep over three regular seasons in Milwaukee (his playoff shooting was significantly less than that, but teams will overlook that in this pursuit).
Boston is one of those teams that's interested in getting Holiday, and why not? He would immediately replace Marcus Smart’s toughness and defense and he can be counted on to hit a shot when the ball rotated back to him.
But the path to getting him is murky, and making it happen would require some serious cap contortionism.
Holiday will make $36,861,707 this season and he has a player option for $39,403,894 next season, so he ain’t cheap.
We also have to remember that there are new rules in place. Gone are the days of matching salaries within 125% plus $100,000. Nowadays, a team like Boston over the first salary apron has to match within 110%.
Getting to Holiday’s number would have been tough under the old rules, but it’s even more difficult now.
The baseline of any trade like this has to involve Malcolm Brogdon. Brogdon makes $22,500,000, and if you bump it up 110%, it’s worth $24,750,000 in a deal. That means Boston has to find $12,111,707 worth of contracts to add to the mix.
You can do that by adding Robert Williams, whose $11,571,429 is worth $12,728,571 in a deal.
But wait. Didn’t Brad Stevens say the reason they traded Marcus Smart for Kristaps Porzingis was to balance the backcourt and frontcourt?
“I thought we needed to balance our roster and looked at the best ways to do that,” he said after the trade. “And that meant that we were likely going to lose a really, really, really good player.”
If that's really the case, then I’m not sure the Celtics will sacrifice an important piece of their frontcourt to add another version of Smart. The same thinking would apply to Al Horford, whose $10 million salary could account for $11 million of the gap between Brogdon and Holiday’s salaries. In that situation, Boston would need to attach one more player to the deal.
So the Celtics could get the job done with Williams alone or Horford plus, probably, Sam Hauser, but that's a pretty big price to pay (not even considering draft capital) for Holiday, who is 33 years old.
Not only that, but Boston would then have four players on their team next season making a combined $153,346,425. That would already be almost $11 million over the cap and there’d be no avoiding the second apron.
Maybe you’re thinking the Celtics can do it by putting other players into the mix? Well, the combined salaries would still have to get to just over $11 million, so it would have to be Payton Pritchard ($4,037,278), Luke Kornet ($2,413,304), Oshae Brissett ($2,165,000), Dalano Banton ($2,019,706), and Jordan Walsh ($1,119,563) to get to $11,754,851.
And of course, it makes total sense to make a 6-for-1 trade just before training camp to get a 33-year-old point guard and then have to go sign five minimum-wage guys to fill the gaps. And oh, by the way, a bunch of these newly signed guys can’t be traded until at least December anyway so some of these combinations aren’t even legal at the moment. AND that's not even taking into account that Portland would never do a deal like that because they’d have to waive everyone anyway. And I know what you’re thinking after that … “great! Boston can just re-sign them!”
Nope. Can’t do that. That's the old NBA. Once upon a time, Boston would have had no issue including players in a deal to make salaries match because they’d just include cash and picks, Portland would waive everyone, Boston would re-sign everyone, and that would be that. Now there's a rule where teams can’t bring back players they’ve traded away for one year unless another team picks them up after they were waived and then cuts them.
In fact, there are a lot of tricks people might suggest that aren’t legal.
- They cannot sign Blake Griffin to a huge deal and include him to make salaries match. That's not allowed.
- They cannot use the $6.2 million deal to trade for a player and then include him. There's a two-month waiting period to aggregate a newly acquired player via trade in another trade. Portland is not subject to that because they're trading Holiday on his own, which is allowed immediately.
- They cannot use a third team to skirt salary matching rules. Boston has to send out, within 110%, as much salary as they get back regardless of how many teams are in the deal.
And I repeat, all of these machinations are meaningless if Portland doesn’t want them. Portland might say no to Brogdon and that renders this entire thing meaningless because he absolutely, positively, has to be included in the deal to make things work.
The ONLY way I can think of to make a Holiday deal work is this:
Brogdon, Williams, and whatever realistic combination of picks (some second-rounders? A single first-rounder?) for Holiday. Boston then uses the $6.2 million TPE to find a third center somewhere during the course of the season to shore up the frontcourt.
That's the only thing that makes any kind of semblance of sense, and I hate it with a passion. Boston might feel like they have to make a move if Miami or Philadelphia is hot on Holiday, just so they can prevent him from going to a rival, but I think at this point we’re entering an almost panicked state of mind.
Holiday is very good, but I don’t want the Celtics to get caught up in a frenzy to get him. They’ll explore the deal because they have to explore everything, but getting to the number to match Holiday’s salary will be painful and it puts them in a tough position both with their roster and their cap sheet afterward.
There's a way to get a deal done for Holiday, but it doesn’t make any sense for me.