NEW YORK — To Jaylen Brown, the Celtics’ 38-point elimination-game loss to the Knicks “felt like death.” And in a way, it was.
Boston’s bid for immortality — to become the first NBA team since 2018 and the first Celtics squad in more than 50 years to win back-to-back championships — died Friday night in front of a ravenous crowd at Madison Square Garden.
The question now is whether an entire era of Celtics basketball died with it.
This season’s roster was nearly identical to the one that secured Banner 18 last June. Unlike most NBA champions, the Celtics were able to return their entire rotation, including a starting five that took in a combined salary of $163.4 million.
But the window for that high-priced, star-studded group was always going to be narrow.
With extensions for Jayson Tatum, Derrick White and Sam Hauser set to kick in this offseason, resulting in even more onerous luxury tax penalties under the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement, keeping this crew together for another year would cost around $500 million between salaries and tax sanctions — an untenable sum for any franchise, especially when coupled with the player acquisition restrictions placed on second-apron teams like the Celtics.
That was true at the start of Boston’s ill-fated playoff run, which ended with a six-game second-round loss to New York that featured three second-half collapses, followed by a 119-81 pasting. It’s even more undeniable now that Tatum will miss at least a significant chunk of the 2025-26 campaign after rupturing his Achilles in Game 4 and undergoing surgery a day later.
Changes are coming. President of basketball operations Brad Stevens — likely with input from from Wyc Grousbeck and new incoming majority owner Bill Chisholm — must decide how sweeping those changes will be.
Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday — the two players Stevens acquired last summer to push Boston over the championship hump — are two logical trade candidates, though both carry concerns that could give other teams pause.
Porzingis, who will be on a $30.7 million expiring contract, has missed 65 regular-season games over his two Celtics seasons and was rendered borderline unplayable by a mysterious viral illness this postseason. Holiday still is a valuable player, especially on the defensive end, but he turns 35 next month and is set to make more than $32 million in each of the next three seasons, including a player option for 2027-28.
Holiday also sat out 23 games due to injury this season, including three in the playoffs. That was a trend across the Celtics’ roster. Seven of their top eight players missed more games than they did in 2023-24, with that group collectively logging 44 more DNPs than the previous season. The lone exception: White, who played in 76 games and was the lone Boston starter not to appear on the injury report during the postseason.
Hauser, a core reserve whose salary is set to jump from $2.1 million to $10 million next season, also could be on the trade block. Big men Al Horford and Luke Kornet are impending unrestricted free agents; both should garner external interest after Horford remained productive at age 38 and Kornet enjoyed the best season of his career.
The biggest unknown involves players like White and Brown. Both are locked up for four more seasons and should be foundational pieces. But they’re also Boston’s top trade chips (along with dirt-cheap Sixth Man of the Year Payton Pritchard). If the Celtics don’t expect to have Tatum in the fold for much or any of next season, would they consider moving White or Brown, recouping assets, cutting down their payroll and treating 2025-26 as a reset year of sorts, with an eye toward returning to contention with a healthy Tatum the following year?
All options, outside of trading a rehabbing Tatum, could be in play this offseason.
“We set a goal out,” head coach Joe Mazzulla said after Friday’s season-ending loss. “We didn’t achieve that goal, but that shouldn’t take away, for me, from the mindset and effort that the players put in. So we have a responsibility and ownership. We didn’t do it, but the approach, the process to it, you can’t ask for any more from the guys. I thought they gave everything they had throughout the season.
“Obviously, we didn’t achieve that, but you can’t take away from what they did. This is the price you pay for trying to go after something, and that’s how it goes.”
Originally Published: