How Celtics’ painful roster overhaul eventually could pay big dividends originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
If you’re looking for some sort of light at the end of the tunnel as the Boston Celtics’ championship roster is stripped for parts to pay the rent on the 2024 title season, set your gaze toward the summer of 2027.
Boston’s painful-but-inevitable roster reckoning continued Monday night as the team watched free agent center Luke Kornet agree to a four-year, $41 million deal with the San Antonio Spurs.
It says something about the joy that Kornet brought to Boston that the initial reaction from most Celtics fans was, “Hey, good for Luke!” before they bemoaned the loss of a third core member of Boston’s title team in the span of seven days.
Kornet deserves his payday — one the Celtics simply were not equipped to give him. He’s a great success story: Under-recruited by colleges and undrafted in the NBA, Kornet toiled in the G-League for multiple seasons before finding a home in Boston. Not only did Kornet blossom into a starter-caliber center and an analytics darling, he permeated joy and led the league in laughs created per 36.
We’ll miss Kornet’s barking. Or him mimicking Stromile Swift’s dunk celebrations. We’ll miss Kornet launching campaign ads designed to smear Derrick White’s candidacy for the Tommy Award. We’ll miss the Kornet Kontests. The Celtics will miss his elite screening, his offensive rebounding, and his desire to do whatever the game plan asked of him, highlighted as Kornet morphed from a floor-stretching big into a short-roll savant during his Boston tenure.
The harsh reality is that Boston will enter the 2025-26 season without at least four of their top nine players from the 2024 title team. Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis were dealt in cost-saving moves, Kornet got his payday to join Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio, and Jayson Tatum could miss the entirety of next season while rehabbing from Achilles surgery.
The Celtics are probably not done tinkering, either. The team is still hugged up against the second apron, but there are pathways now to not only staying behind that roster-restricting line but getting out of the luxury tax completely.
That likely would involve eventually moving off newly-acquired guard Anfernee Simons and his $27.7 million expiring contract. The Celtics also must ponder the futures of Sam Hauser (whose $45 million extension kicks in this season) and new addition Georges Niang (who is making $8.2 million on an expiring contract) as well.
An offseason focused on math is no fun. But here’s the potential end game: If the Celtics avoid the luxury tax in each of the next two seasons, the team would be positioned to splurge in the summer of 2027. Boston could restock the pieces around whatever version of the Tatum/Jaylen Brown/Derrick White core that remains and spend at least two more seasons pursuing titles.
The new collective bargaining agreement is going to make this a new reality in the NBA. If you want to chase titles, you’re going to do it in short windows while being prepared to pivot (unless you have a treasure trove of young players and draft picks like Oklahoma City). The Celtics got ahead of the incoming crunch by trading for (and extending) Holiday and Porzingis.
But everyone knew those contracts would be untenable starting this summer. The acquisition of Banner 18 helps ease the pain of this offseason.
This isn’t to write off the next two seasons, either. But the reality is that once Tatum fell to the floor at Madison Square Garden in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, the Celtics needed to play a long game.
If Brown and White are the centerpieces of Boston’s roster next season, this team is still good enough to linger in playoff contention in the injury-ravaged East. But as teams like Atlanta and Orlando load up to start this summer, and as Cleveland and New York tinker after highly successful seasons, the pathway toward title contention remains full of obstacles.
The biggest one, as Brad Stevens eloquently noted on draft night, is that your All-NBA forward is in a boot.
Maybe the Celtics fill out their roster with enough talent to plod through. Maybe they pivot to a soft tank if things fizzle next season. The 2026 offseason is enticing, and Boston has a bunch of picks to help its maneuverability. Player development should be a greater priority, and it will be interesting to see if the team can mold some new superstar-in-their-role players in the same way that Kornet was hardly an eight-figure player when he first arrived.
Newly-signed big man Luka Garza should get every chance to show what he can do with greater opportunity. Simons, if carried into the season, gets a chance to show that he can be more than just a volume scorer.
🔊 Celtics Talk EMERGENCY POD: Out with Luke, in with Luka… Luke Kornet signing with the Spurs | Listen & Subscribe | Watch on YouTube
But the key move in getting back to legitimate title contention might be as simple as avoiding the luxury tax over the next two seasons. That would reset the costly repeater penalties that had Boston staring at a $500 million total spend had it not stripped its roster this summer. The Celtics were on pace to pay $8.5 dollars (or more) for every dollar spent over the luxury tax line.
Reducing the bottom line has been no fun, but it had to be done sooner than later. So why not navigate it now before Tatum is back at the peak of his powers?
The Celtics currently project to enter the summer of 2027 with only Tatum, Brown, White, Hauser, and Pritchard on the roster at a total of $176.3 million. Add in Baylor Scheierman, and their payroll will sit at roughly $181 million at a time the second apron could be closer to $244 million.
Boston could comfortably field a roster in the neighborhood of $300 million for two consecutive seasons without costly repeater penalties. Brown and White reach free agency at the end of that second season, creating a potential pathway to the next pivot in the summer of 2029.
Maybe Stevens has a different vision moving forward. Maybe the top end of the roster is simply too expensive to keep intact and a bigger swing awaits. But there’s a pathway to putting together a new core in the summer of 2027. There’s a chance for what’s left of this core and chase Banner 19 together again.
Waiting is painful. Not having someone like Kornet to ease the tension doesn’t help either. But there’s light at the end of this tunnel. Even if it doesn’t feel like it the past week.
How Celtics’ painful roster overhaul eventually could pay big dividends
It may not be long until Boston is back in title contention.
If you’re looking for some sort of light at the end of the tunnel as the Boston Celtics’ championship roster is stripped for parts to pay the rent on the 2024 title season, set your gaze toward the summer of 2027.
Boston’s painful-but-inevitable roster reckoning continued Monday night as the team watched free agent center Luke Kornet agree to a four-year, $41 million deal with the San Antonio Spurs.
It says something about the joy that Kornet brought to Boston that the initial reaction from most Celtics fans was, “Hey, good for Luke!” before they bemoaned the loss of a third core member of Boston’s title team in the span of seven days.
SIGN UP HERE Kornet deserves his payday — one the Celtics simply were not equipped to give him. He’s a great success story: Under-recruited by colleges and undrafted in the NBA, Kornet toiled in the G-League for multiple seasons before finding a home in Boston. Not only did Kornet blossom into a starter-caliber center and an analytics darling, he permeated joy and led the league in laughs created per 36.
We’ll miss Kornet’s barking. Or him mimicking Stromile Swift’s dunk celebrations. We’ll miss Kornet launching campaign ads designed to smear Derrick White’s candidacy for the Tommy Award. We’ll miss the Kornet Kontests. The Celtics will miss his elite screening, his offensive rebounding, and his desire to do whatever the game plan asked of him, highlighted as Kornet morphed from a floor-stretching big into a short-roll savant during his Boston tenure.
The harsh reality is that Boston will enter the 2025-26 season without at least four of their top nine players from the 2024 title team. Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis were dealt in cost-saving moves, Kornet got his payday to join Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio, and Jayson Tatum could miss the entirety of next season while rehabbing from Achilles surgery.
The Celtics are probably not done tinkering, either. The team is still hugged up against the second apron, but there are pathways now to not only staying behind that roster-restricting line but getting out of the luxury tax completely.
That likely would involve eventually moving off newly-acquired guard Anfernee Simons and his $27.7 million expiring contract. The Celtics also must ponder the futures of Sam Hauser (whose $45 million extension kicks in this season) and new addition Georges Niang (who is making $8.2 million on an expiring contract) as well.
An offseason focused on math is no fun. But here’s the potential end game: If the Celtics avoid the luxury tax in each of the next two seasons, the team would be positioned to splurge in the summer of 2027. Boston could restock the pieces around whatever version of the Tatum/Jaylen Brown/Derrick White core that remains and spend at least two more seasons pursuing titles.
The new collective bargaining agreement is going to make this a new reality in the NBA. If you want to chase titles, you’re going to do it in short windows while being prepared to pivot (unless you have a treasure trove of young players and draft picks like Oklahoma City). The Celtics got ahead of the incoming crunch by trading for (and extending) Holiday and Porzingis.
But everyone knew those contracts would be untenable starting this summer. The acquisition of Banner 18 helps ease the pain of this offseason.
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This isn’t to write off the next two seasons, either. But the reality is that once Tatum fell to the floor at Madison Square Garden in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, the Celtics needed to play a long game.
If Brown and White are the centerpieces of Boston’s roster next season, this team is still good enough to linger in playoff contention in the injury-ravaged East. But as teams like Atlanta and Orlando load up to start this summer, and as Cleveland and New York tinker after highly successful seasons, the pathway toward title contention remains full of obstacles.
The biggest one, as Brad Stevens eloquently noted on draft night, is that your All-NBA forward is in a boot.
Maybe the Celtics fill out their roster with enough talent to plod through. Maybe they pivot to a soft tank if things fizzle next season. The 2026 offseason is enticing, and Boston has a bunch of picks to help its maneuverability. Player development should be a greater priority, and it will be interesting to see if the team can mold some new superstar-in-their-role players in the same way that Kornet was hardly an eight-figure player when he first arrived.
Newly-signed big man Luka Garza should get every chance to show what he can do with greater opportunity. Simons, if carried into the season, gets a chance to show that he can be more than just a volume scorer.
🔊 Celtics Talk EMERGENCY POD: Out with Luke, in with Luka… Luke Kornet signing with the Spurs | Listen & Subscribe | Watch on YouTube
But the key move in getting back to legitimate title contention might be as simple as avoiding the luxury tax over the next two seasons. That would reset the costly repeater penalties that had Boston staring at a $500 million total spend had it not stripped its roster this summer. The Celtics were on pace to pay $8.5 dollars (or more) for every dollar spent over the luxury tax line.
Reducing the bottom line has been no fun, but it had to be done sooner than later. So why not navigate it now before Tatum is back at the peak of his powers?
The Celtics currently project to enter the summer of 2027 with only Tatum, Brown, White, Hauser, and Pritchard on the roster at a total of $176.3 million. Add in Baylor Scheierman, and their payroll will sit at roughly $181 million at a time the second apron could be closer to $244 million.
Boston could comfortably field a roster in the neighborhood of $300 million for two consecutive seasons without costly repeater penalties. Brown and White reach free agency at the end of that second season, creating a potential pathway to the next pivot in the summer of 2029.
Maybe Stevens has a different vision moving forward. Maybe the top end of the roster is simply too expensive to keep intact and a bigger swing awaits. But there’s a pathway to putting together a new core in the summer of 2027. There’s a chance for what’s left of this core and chase Banner 19 together again.
Waiting is painful. Not having someone like Kornet to ease the tension doesn’t help either. But there’s light at the end of this tunnel. Even if it doesn’t feel like it the past week.
