Bobby Marks’ 2025 Boston Celtics Offseason Guide | NBA on ESPN

Bobby Marks’ 2025 Boston Celtics Offseason Guide | NBA on ESPN

All right, a happy Friday night, especially if you are a New York Knicks fans. Uh, the Boston Celtics become team 25 to enter the postseason. Hopefully, everyone is doing great out there. We’re going to do a Celtics offseason video in a minute. You can read about the Celtics in uh on ESPN.com. Their article is up. Gives you a look at certainly what’s what to expect, what we can look ahead to, I guess, for Boston. and enter the offseason. Certainly, there’s going to be a a ton of questions here. I would say uh certainly when you win a championship, you want to defend it on your own terms. The loss of Jason Tatum certainly takes a a big, you know, certainly impacts a lot of things here. And it’s him leaving the game on game four and him being carried off um is kind of how I remember this Boston season this year. Uh the inability to defend it to defend your championship because your best player has torn his Achilles. Um, I can’t believe I was going to tweet something and then I didn’t want to get into Twitter war because Twitter is the the best place to get arguments. I can’t believe there are actually people accredited on um that that made a comment that Boston was I don’t want to say better off with Jaylen Brown than Jason Tatum, but Jaylen Brown plays a harder brand of basketball, whatever the heck that means. Golly geez. Uh the state of uh sports media. I will say this regarding Boston. Um and and I know people are saying, well, you know, it was an embarrassment. They lost you by 40. Listen, when you go on a road in a game six and you basically get take the first punch and you can’t get off the canvas, you’re it’s going to snowball and you’re going to lose by 35 40 points. Now, let’s talk about the Celtics off season here. There are going to be a lot of things that are going to be dissected in the next months, few months here. Um, you are about to enter uncharted waters when it comes to your payroll. You look at um where they are financially, where they are with the apron, where they are with a new ownership group that’s about to come in. I thought the only way that this roster stays together is if they get to an NBA finals or if they win an NBA finals. And and trust me, change is coming here. Um they’ve got two they have two picks in the top 32. That’s the good news. 28 and 32. The second is from Washington. They are free agents are Al Horford and Luke Cornet. Tory Craig. JD Davidson’s got a team option. Drew Peterson was on a two-way. Regarding Horford and Cornet, who certainly have value and were a big part of your front court here, here’s how the the the finances are going to impact Boston. For every three $3 million you spend, so let’s say if you bring back Horford and Cornet on a $3 million contract, it will it will cost an additional $25 million per person. So to bring both players back, it will cost you $50 million. you’re going to have to sign somebody to your roster as far as from a minimum s standpoint. Um, but each guy will cost you uh $25 million each. Your payroll where you are right now, and we put the the graphic up. Uh, you are at 2, let me pull it up here. Uh, you are at 231 in salary and you have a projected tax penalty of 263. So you’re you’re almost at $500 million. That is not sustainable. Why is it $500 million? People want to ask, why is it $263 million? Because year one of the Jason Tatum Supermax contract and year one of the Derek White extension and year one of Sam Hower’s extension are now kicking in. Now, you couple that with the and people are probably thinking, “Oh my god, is there another rule coming with the CBA?” Yeah, there is. You couple that with a set of new rules, tax bracket rules that are going to come into into effect and are going to severely impact teams who are a re repeater tax team. In the case of the Boston Celtics, they are repeater tax team. This is their their their four years in a row as far as being in attacks. Where how it impacts the Celtics basically is everything gets doubled. So if you are, we’ll put a bracket up tomorrow. We’re not going to do today. Let’s say you’re in this tier four bracket with your um between 11.4 and $17 million over. It cost you $550 mil 5.5 million for every dollar you’re over. It is a whopper. It basically as I as we mentioned the cornet and wherford number and then there’s the opposite where if you traded Sam Hower it would call it would save you $80 million. It’s it’s not sustainable. It really isn’t. I mean you finished you finished the season over the f the second apron your 2032nd pick is frozen. If you finish the um next year over the second apron, your 2033 pick will become frozen. You’re entering charter the territory. Basically, your pick is going to move back in the first round. You’re not there yet, but you’re getting there close. So, here are here is where here is what we’re looking at here. And your owner, not your new one, Wick Gross, basically came out and said it’s not sustainable to be in the second apron. You know, it it it really is. And it’s not the luxury tax. It’s basically the roster restriction rules. Of course, the luxury tax plays into it because the more money you spend, the more that you’re going to go into over the apron here. So, as you know, and you went through it this um this regular during the regular season and last year, Celtics fans, the inability to aggregate contracts, the the inability to combine contracts, right? put two together. The inability to um use more than 100% of the traded player exception. That means taking back more money. The inability to to send out cash in a trade. The inability to use a pre-existing trade exception. That trade exception you created from the Jaden Springer trade that’s no longer available for you. The inability to sign a player that was uh waved that had a pre pre-existing salary of $14.1 million. your um as I mentioned your pick if you’re over next year will become frozen. Your pick in 2032 is already frozen. Um the rules it’s bas these are all the rules we know that basically forced the Clippers to let Paul George walk and Denver to let Contavius Cwell Pope walk. You are in that apron territory and you’re not just over it, you’re buried in it. You’re about 23 24$24 million over that second apron. Um, so here’s what you’re looking at. Okay, we talked about the finances. 231 in salary, 263 in tax penalty. Three different scenarios. This is coming from me. I’m not in Brad Stevens office right now. There are three different scenarios that you’re going to be looking at this off season. The first and more unlikely, okay, is that you basically keep this thing intact. You add your two picks, 28 and 32, and you roll back this same group, and you embrace paying a $500 million payroll. Now, you’ve got to make a decision on Horford and Cornet. Now, with Tatamount, your front court is awfully thin here. As we mentioned, the conservative approach should be met with caution. basically will cost you $50 million additional. So basically that 263 number goes to five I don’t know 515ish 315 excuse me. So you’re basically your roster now goes up to man it is high. My god it’s like 550. Um so that’s option one. Basically the conservative we basically are in a holding pattern. We wait for Tatum to get back in 2026 likely and we compete for a top six seed in the in the um in the Eastern Conference. Okay, under the old CBA, you could do that. I don’t think you could do it under this one. Option two, this is the cost cutting option here. This is where you’re basically shedding salary. You could go either the Kristoff’s Porzingis option. This is a little bit more challenging where you’re trying to shed his $31 million expiring contract. Problem is there the only team out there that has cap space is the Brooklyn Nets. It’s hard to incent hard to see Brooklyn taking that back unless they’re incentivized. I don’t know if they I don’t think they would do it for 28 and 32 because Brooklyn already has five draft picks this year. The other option is certainly basically a combination of hower holiday and basically you just start chipping away as far as um getting that number down. So example maybe you trade pooring is for a a $22 million player and then you take the other two and you get and you basically trade them for $15 million less in salary. I’m just spitballing here. And you basically chip away as far as how you get under that number. I don’t see a a plan where you basically just dump $24 million in salary to somebody just because of where we are with the economics of this off season and getting under in one full swoop. It might be multiple sep separate moves to get you under. Whether it be taking back like as I said, you know, if you send out 30, maybe you’re taking back 22. If you send out a 10, maybe you can drop Hower if you want. I mean, still on a good contract into somebody’s trade exception. So, there is mechanisms if you want to go out and do that as far as the cost cutting measure. Here’s the third one. This is a little bit more drastic. Okay, we call this the the gapyear reset option. What does the gapy year reset option mean? It’s basically you’re going to wait for Tatum to get back. You’re going to build the roster with Tatum and Derek White. You are going to look at trade suitors for Jaylen Brown and you are going to do a full reset. It’s basically somebody made a great example an analogy of this. It’s basically I don’t want to compare it to what like what happened with the Bulls and because Chicago is not in that era as far as when Chicago won their first three championships and then Jordan goes to takes a hiatus and he goes to play baseball and they basically retool the roster around Jordan Pippen. You basically have a different group of guys but you still have your somewhat of your core guys. That is the reset option where where you’re basically punting away next season and you are probably competing for a backend lot playing spot. Um but you’re basically cashing in Jaylen Brown who has four years left on his contract. Um uh four years left on I don’t think he has 285. Oops. I got to lower that number down. Four years left on his contract. Um that’s your reset option where it’s basically it’s it’s uh white Tatum who’s injured looking at trade suitors for Brown Holiday Porzingis and you’re basically using your your first round draft pick and a loaded draft and hopefully you catch lightning in a bottle like Dallas just did with Cooper Flag. So, those are your type of options that you’re looking at if you’re Boston, your extension candidate. I don’t see any extensions this off season. Um, certainly with um certainly with Porzingis, uh, Porzingis, Horford, and and Jordan Walsh are all eligible. I don’t see that happening at all. Your team needs certainly front court depth. Um that is a major major priority with uh Tatum out and the possibility of losing Horford and um Horford and um Cornet. Um pulling up this Boston article. Sorry kids. Um and then your draft assets. You have five of their own first round picks in the next seven years. Why only five? because one of them is frozen. You owe one in 2029. That goes to either Portland or Portland or Washington. Um the maximum that you can trade is one first. Here’s the reason why you can trade 20 2026 or 2027. Remember, you can’t trade backtoback years. 2032 becomes frozen. You owe one in 29. It’s all stagnated. You can’t trade in 31 because 32 is frozen, right? So, it’s it just the inability to trade picks become extremely extremely difficult as far as what you have uh what you have to offer in a deal here. Um that is it for Boston. It’s not a great it’s not great. Um, but congrat always have your championship and that is important here. So, there are decisions that are coming in Boston and um, we wait and see what happens next. Take care.

Bobby Marks gives his 2025 offseason guide for the Boston Celtics after they were eliminated by the New York Knicks in six games.

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