Kristaps Porzingis sat to Brad Stevens’ right at a podium inside the Auerbach Center on Thursday. Among other things, it represented the Celtics taking on a difficult challenge head on.
With the addition of Porzingis to the fold, the Celtics now have three big salaries on their roster including Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown that puts them well into the luxury tax as free agency began on Friday at 6 p.m. But even as salary cap restrictions loom with the new collective bargaining agreement, the Celtics weren’t dissuaded from adding to their payroll.
“We’re trying to win and everybody is very supportive of that from top down,” Stevens said. “It starts with (co-owners) Wyc (Grousbeck) and (Steve Pagliuca) and our ownership group. We’re trying to win and we’re going to try to do the best to put our best foot forward to do that.”
As it stood entering free agency, the Celtics have 11 players under contract and are certainly not finished with their roster construction – whether that means adding or even potentially more trades that could open up more cap space. Grant Williams’ restricted free agency looms but his return doesn’t seem likely given Boston’s needs and his price tag. The Celtics reportedly made the one-year, $8.5 million qualifying offer to Williams, which is a routine process that gives them the ability to match any offer sheet as he hits restricted free agency.
Even while facing limitations, Stevens said the Celtics will continue to spend as they fill out their roster but be responsible about it.
“I mean, we’re really lucky,” Stevens said. “We’ve got the green light to continue to add. I think that the biggest part for us is making sure that we are smart about building a team, right? Obviously you’re always looking at it from the standpoint of this year, but also down the road. But I do think that again, we’re fortunate that we’re deep into the tax last year. We’ll be into it this year and have the green light to continue to do it.
“We just want to be building a team that makes sense playing together. And sometimes that means spending more and sometimes that means figuring out that you’ve got the guys to build around and then putting the right people around. And so that’s the challenge here moving forward over the next few weeks.”
Stevens believes he has a core of talented players and mentioned a group of eight that includes Payton Pritchard. Now it’s about finding the right players to fit around them.
“I think the biggest thing is we just want to keep, obviously, we want everybody that comes here to understand what the ultimate goal is, and everybody that is a part of this group to understand what the ultimate goal is, and that’s to put all of our strengths together and try to win it all,” Stevens said. “And so every decision we make will be with that as kind of the North Star.
“I think that it’s very obvious we’ve got a great core of players that people will want to play with and want to be around and we just have to find accentuators; people that accentuate that group. We’ve talked about that in the past and I thought last year’s team, we had a lot of that. And I think as we sit here right now, with who we have under contract, and what our potential avenues are, I think we’ll be able to have that again.”
Porzingis is only under contract for this season with the Celtics after the trade but they’re eligible to offer the big man a two-year extension up to $77 million beginning on July 6. Could the C’s lock him up to a deal despite that he hasn’t played a minute for them yet?
It seems likely. As free agency began Friday, TNT’s Chris Haynes reported that Porzingis and the Celtics are expected to finalize a two-year, $60 million extension that would kick in starting in the 2024-25 season.
“We’ll have a chance to talk here in the next couple of days, or the next weeks, whatever it is,” Stevens said on Thursday. “But, obviously we really like Kristaps. We want him here. We obviously have him next year and then hopefully beyond, but we’ll see about all that.”
In an interview with NBC Sports Boston, Porzingis also expressed a desire to stay with the Celtics long-term.
“The idea of being here for a long time would be what I want,” Porzingis said. “It would be what I want and when the time comes, it’s hopefully going to be a discussion and we’ll see.”
The Celtics’ seemingly first priority was beefing up the coaching staff under Joe Mazzulla, who had a depleted group working with him as a rookie head coach last season. The C’s reportedly added veteran assistants Sam Cassell and Charles Lee in addition to Phil Pressey and Amile Jefferson. Mazzulla had the biggest say in those hires, and he was pleased with how the new staff has come together.
“It’s just who can we get that fits who has great experience, who’s been around the NBA, who’s brought different mindsets and have done it in different ways so we can expand our staff and constantly learn from the league and what’s good and what doesn’t work,” Mazzulla said. “And then what complements our team, and how we can just put the best staff together to put our team in the best chance to win. And so the guys we added do that because of where they’ve been and we’re excited about that.”