The Celtics are not going to be the same next season. We all know that at this point. The question is how different will they be. The Celtics are going to make trades, so here are some important things to know.
1. The Celtics are looking to mitigate the damage.
They are looking for value in a deal for Jrue Holiday or Kristaps Porzingis, but “value” to Boston means something different nowadays.
The best way to look at the big picture is this: There aren’t many options for salary dumps, so the Celtics will have to take players back for their biggest salaries. The goal here is twofold: save some money and bring back someone who can at least be useful.
2. Salary “matching” rules are different for different teams.
The apron system has created tiers of teams that can do different things. Keith Smith of Spotrac put together this handy chart.
I'm just gonna redrop the chart here, because a lot of people are talking about what teams can and can't do at the various aprons. Hopefully this helps! pic.twitter.com/sbe22gcqIK
— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) December 31, 2024
The system is designed for the teams in the top two tiers to do business with the teams in the bottom two. The theory is that the expensive teams have the good players, the non-expensive teams are trying to build, and so the non-expensive teams acquiring the good, expensive players will make them better as the expensive teams are dismantled.
The lower the restrictions on the teams, the looser the salary matching rules are, which means those teams can take back a Holiday or Porzingis deal without having to send Boston the exact amount of money.
This is where it gets complicated and everyone gets an ice cream headache. A Holiday trade proposal with a team over one of the aprons might not be legal, a proposal with players making the exact same salaries on a team in a lower tier might work. There is no longer a single universal rule when it comes to matching salaries.
3. The restrictions are based on how a team FINISHES the deal, not how it starts.
The Celtics are a second apron team and they can’t aggregate salaries in a deal. HOWEVER, the Celtics CAN send multiple players out in a deal IF the result of the deal is that they are under the second apron.
They CANNOT try to trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo by aggregating more than one player to make the money work.
They CAN combine Holiday and Sam Hauser in a deal that returns less money and brings them under the second apron.
** IMPORTANT NOTE: Aggregating players hard caps a team at the second apron. So if Boston were to go this route, they could not, under any circumstances, spend more than $207,825,000 next season.
4. The same trade can be structured differently by each team in order to make it legal.
This is an important thing to remember in these deals: Each team can structure the deal however they want, and the two teams in the deal can call the deal into the league differently. It sounds weird, but all that matters is that each team calls in a legal trade.
This is generally how traded player exceptions get created. One team calls in a straight trade of aggregated salaries while the other structures it as separate deals to create TPEs.
5. The Celtics have ALL SEASON to accomplish their financial goals.
I’ve mentioned some of this before, but it’s important to reiterate and get all of this under one headline. The Celtics do NOT have to get under the second apron by the start of the season. They can get part of the way there and then wait and see how things go.
This is very important to keep in mind because getting under the second apron can mean different things for Boston.
They can make a move or two to get just under the second apron and see how that goes. Maybe they end up with a team they like and fits well enough to make a run after Jayson Tatum comes back from his injury. It doesn’t matter if they get under the second apron by a dollar or $10 million. Under is under in terms of working to undo future draft penalties. The only matter at that point is the tax bill.
However, if Tatum isn’t progressing well enough to realistically perform normally come playoff time, then they might just take the opportunity to dump further salary and use the trade deadline to go further into tax-saving mode.
The Celtics need to make financially motivated moves, but there is a best-case scenario where they put off the most painful stuff for another season.
However the Celtics proceed, these are the things you need to keep in mind as they do. There's more, but the ice cream headache takes a little while to go away.