Luke Kornet has been great this season, especially recently. He’s been very good at screening and getting guys open, he’s a strong finisher around the rim, and his offensive rebounding has reached another level.
Watch Luke screening.... goes to set it, then he flips it, then he runs like a fullback ahead of Jaylen to screen his man who was in drop. He cleared that whole lane pic.twitter.com/khmrjVhS1x
— John Karalis 🇬🇷 (@John_Karalis) April 7, 2025
“He’s unbelievable. Just seems to always be in the right place,” Derrick White said. “He just kind of makes the game easy for everybody and if there is a miss, I know big Luke’s down there, most likely, to get a hand on it or something’s gonna happen. So he’s been unbelievable for us all year, and I’m happy for him.”
A lot of people will be happy for him this summer when he signs a new contract. He had some suitors last summer but chose to come back to Boston on a minimum deal. All he’s done since then is prove he’s one of the better bargains in the league. He turns 30 this July, so this is his last real chance to make serious money in the NBA.
That will be great for him, but it could be bad for Boston. This team is already expensive, but guys like Kornet producing on minimum deals have helped the Celtics manage their tax burden to some degree. Next year, that bill explodes and the second apron becomes more of a factor in Boston’s decision-making.
There aren’t many people who thought this would be part of the April discourse, but with how Kornet is playing, there is one question that continues to pop up.
Can Boston afford to keep him?
To get to the heart of that, we must first answer other questions: What is he worth, who needs to be moved, and will all the cap gymnastics be worth it?
His price on the open market is up for some debate. That always depends on what someone is willing to pay, but there's an outlier risk baked into the new CBA.
While teams like Boston are scrambling to cut salary and taxes, teams on the other end have to reach a salary floor by the beginning of the season. If they don’t, they don’t get a piece of the tax payout. So some teams have chosen to give a couple of lucky players monster paydays over short contracts to get there. The Indiana Pacers did that with Bruce Brown, and some team might do that with Kornet.
Imagine Washington or Charlotte landing Cooper Flagg and turning to Kornet as a temporary pick-and-roll partner. If he can work with one big wing out of Duke, why not another?
Assuming that doesn’t materialize, a look around the league can set Kornet’s value somewhere around $7-$12 million. Andre Drummond is making $5 million with Philadelphia, so Kornet is worth more than that. Paul Reed is getting $7.7 million in Detroit. Larry Nance is making $11 million in Atlanta. Robert Williams is making $12.4 million in Portland. Certainly, Kornet slots in somewhere between that group.
Using round numbers, Boston will be about $19 million over the second apron next season when factoring in their first-round pick’s salary. They not only have to move enough money to get under that line, they have to move enough to STAY under that line after salaries are handed out. This number takes into account 11 signed players and a draft pick, leaving two spots that need to be filled. Kornet’s spot is one, Al Horford’s is the other.
Horford is almost certainly coming back next season. So his value also needs to be determined. Maybe he’ll do Boston a favor and play for the veteran minimum. Maybe they’ll reward him and give him a little bit more than that. I’m going to set the combined salary target for Horford and Kornet at $15 million.
That means Boston would need to clear $34 million just to end up right at the second apron ($19 million to get to the line and $15 million more to account for the Horford/Kornet signings).
Jrue Holiday will make $32.4 million next season, so trading him for nothing won’t necessarily get the job done on its own unless Horford and Kornet take $1.6 million less combined. There are two problems, though, with this scenario.
First, that only puts Boston at the edge of the second apron, which means they would have to walk a tightrope all season. Second, there's only one team, Brooklyn, currently set up to have the cap space to execute a Holiday-for-nothing trade. That kind of leverage would be costly, meaning Boston would have to pay a big price (a first-round pick, perhaps) to salary dump Holiday.
This also doesn’t take into account Boston’s luxury taxes, which are currently projected to be somewhere around $220 million. Cutting $19 million will have an exponential impact on that bill, for sure, but the team could be looking for cheaper ways to accomplish similar goals, especially on the periphery of the roster.
Moving Holiday alone, even if Brooklyn plays ball, is likely not enough. In this scenario, they’d probably need to move someone else to give them some wiggle room. The top candidate is probably Sam Hauser, who will make a little more than $10 million next season. If the theoretical Holiday move gets them under the second apron, the trade rules ease up a bit. Not only is it easier to move Hauser for nothing, they can take a player back who makes less to give themselves some wiggle room.
This is where my final of the original three questions comes in. Is all this worth it to keep Luke Kornet?
Kornet, again, has been great. By human standards, his $14 million in career earnings is a lot of money, but that's not much by NBA standards. If a team wants to offer him a two or three-year deal worth $10 million a year, he should grab it and do what’s best for his family.
And if that's the case, I think the Celtics can just move on from him and hope to replace him with either someone on the roster, or someone else in an offseason trade. The Celtics will still probably need to make moves to duck the second apron regardless, but they could look to get a cheap big in return who can learn how to roll and pass next to Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
There is always a hometown discount scenario. If Kornet values his quality of life in Boston over getting as much money as possible, then he could end up taking less than I’ve laid out here. Obviously, the less he takes, the easier it makes things for the Celtics. But that's up to him and his family to find where that balance lies. The same goes for Horford.
I think Kornet is too expensive at $10 million per year, and I think everyone involved would just wish him well if that's the contract he got on the open market. Is it worth losing Holiday AND Hauser to keep him? It’s hard to justify, in my opinion.
Welcome to the world of the second apron. This is exactly what the CBA was built to do. Under the old deal, Boston would have just paid taxes and moved on. This deal, with the second apron and the wildly inflated tax system, is built to break down winning teams in short order.
Boston is in the middle of its run at the top, but that's going to go away soon enough. The questions about Kornet are just the beginning. If anything, it’s the first crack in the foundation of this championship team. This summer will be a very interesting one, so if this exercise has come up with any conclusion, it’s this: Enjoy the hell out of this playoff run. This team is changing in a meaningful way very soon, so soak it up while you can.
If you want more on this Kornet conversation, I had a long discussion with NBA cap guru Keith Smith of Spotrac on the Locked On Celtics podcast. You can listen to that here: