“The north star is to have a championship contender, right? So you have to do what’s best to give yourself the best opportunity to do that when you can do that.”
That’s how Brad Stevens, the Celtics’ president of basketball operations, described his team-building mindset just weeks ago. This week, he showed exactly what that means. In the last 48 hours, the 2024 champion Boston Celtics blew up their own roster, trading away two key pieces of their title team in Kristaps Porziņģis and Jrue Holiday. On paper, it was a salary cap masterclass. Inside the locker room, though, it felt like something else entirely: the painful cost of chasing another banner.
If you really think about it, the moves were a necessary evil. The Celtics, staring down a projected $500 million payroll and luxury tax bill under the league’s new, more punitive CBA, had to shed salary. As ESPN’s front-office insider Bobby Marks tweeted, “Trading Kristaps Porzingis now puts Boston under the second apron. The Porzingis and Jrue Holiday trades save Boston a projected $180M in tax penalties.” It’s a staggering number, the kind of financial relief that ownership simply couldn’t ignore, especially in the wake of Jayson Tatum’s devastating Achilles injury.
The first domino to fall was Jrue Holiday, the defensive heart and soul of their championship team, who was shipped to the Portland Trail Blazers in a deal that brought back young scoring guard Anfernee Simons. A day later, Porziņģis, the stretch-five unicorn whose arrival was seen as the final piece of the puzzle, was sent to the Atlanta Hawks in a three-team deal that netted the Celtics veteran forward Georges Niang. From a pure asset management perspective, the deals were a success. They got younger, they got cheaper, and they avoided the dreaded “second apron” of the luxury tax.
But basketball isn’t played on a spreadsheet. And according to Adam Himmelsbach, a Celtics reporter for the Boston Globe, the mood inside the Auerbach Center is far from celebratory. “Was told that the Celtics are pleased with their necessary deals this week,” he tweeted, “but that the general mood within the org is somber, because, basically, it sucks to trade two good players and people who helped you win a title.”
Was told that the Celtics are pleased with their necessary deals this week but that the general mood within the org is somber, because, basically, it sucks to trade two good players and people who helped you win a title.
— Adam Himmelsbach (@AdamHimmelsbach) June 25, 2025
(This is a developing story…)
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