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Brian Windhorst
LAST SUMMER, AFTER the duck boats had paraded through downtown Boston, the confetti had been swept, the cigars had been smoked, and the photos with the trophy taken, only then was it time for business.
On Monday morning, July 1, 10 days after the Boston Celtics’ championship celebration, team governor Wyc Grousbeck shocked the NBA world when he announced his family was putting the controlling interest in the franchise up for sale.
Even so, the Celtics, loaded with in-their-prime talent, ran it all back. They kept their roster intact and pressed down the gas pedal, chasing a repeat and a 19th banner.
They won 61 games in the regular season and sailed through the first round of the playoffs in five games. The plan was, and is still, to win for the next six weeks — and then address the business after another parade.
But the Celtics face an unexpectedly vital Game 3 on Saturday afternoon at Madison Square Garden, stunningly down 2-0 in their conference semifinal series with the New York Knicks.
If the Celtics can’t pivot in this series — especially reversing their untimely shooting slump that has seen them miss a whopping 75 3-pointers over the first two games in blowing back-to-back 20-point second-half leads — their continued viability as a group will suddenly be in question.
No matter how this season played out, this group of champion Celtics faced an uncertain future because of how much it would cost to keep that team, masterfully constructed by team president Brad Stevens, intact.
THE CELTICS ARE being sold to a group led by investor Bill Chisholm at a valuation of more than $6 billion, a record-setting transaction that thrilled NBA power brokers and made everyone feel good about the health of the league.
Chisholm, a lifelong Celtics fan and Massachusetts native, has reportedly been forming a coalition to piece together the financing of the giant purchase.
When it is settled, it seems clear that the Celtics, who were last sold for just $360 million more than 20 years ago, will have a massively more expensive mortgage to service.
The Celtics knew their present and future were tied to two-way wing stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, and they wanted to make sure the duo was locked into long-term contracts. That part of the planning was executed as planned. Brown signed in 2023 and then Tatum did the same in 2024 to deals that would keep them with the Celtics until the end of the decade at a combined cost of more than $600 million.
Dating back at least three years, as the new collective bargaining agreement between team owners and the players’ association was taking shape, the Celtics identified 2025 as a pinch point.
We are weeks away from that point, no matter what happens on the court, because Tatum’s new contract kicks in, and the Celtics will face being a so-called “repeater” luxury tax payer.
There is one pending free agent among the current Boston core: beloved veteran big man Al Horford, who is in the final season of his contract. Everyone else, from guards Derrick White and Jrue Holiday — both of whom signed their own extensions in 2024 — to center Kristaps Porzingis and Sixth Man of the Year Payton Pritchard, is under contract into the future.
Normally, this would be celebrated as savvy management. If you have a great team assembled, you do whatever you can to keep it together. Stevens and his front office have done so.
But the modern NBA presents more complex problems than even expert roster-building can solve.
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Jaylen Brown: ‘Our offense let us down’
Jaylen Brown addresses the Celtics’ late-game decision-making in their Game 2 loss.
AND THAT’S WHERE the giant number comes from. Floating out there for the past year, it is staggering and historic.
Even if Horford doesn’t re-sign — he doesn’t plan to retire and would like to return, sources said — Boston is facing a payroll, with luxury taxes, next season of $464 million, according to ESPN front office insider Bobby Marks.
If the Celtics retain their first-round pick — and, frankly, they need to because they are desperate for the inexpensive contract the selection would provide — and then fill out their roster with minimum salaries, the team payroll crosses the $500 million mark.
Last season, the Celtics set a record for revenue, thanks to the run to the title and four rounds of home playoff games. Losing Game 4 in Dallas last year, after they had a 3-0 lead, was a multimillion-dollar boon, as the Celtics clinched in front of their home fans with a lucrative home Finals game. It helped boost the franchise’s revenue to around $450 million, according to a report by Sportico.
You don’t need a graduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, as Chisholm has, to understand the developing math problem.
That financial storm has mostly churned offshore during this Celtics season. The team hasn’t had conversations with player agents about future spending changes, multiple sources said, and the strategy to keep the focus on the court has been purposeful.
The Celtics players’ families are very tight-knit, fostered from deep playoff runs and roster continuity since the end of COVID-19.
Stevens and his staff have sought to keep the ownership uncertainty off the players’ minds as they try to win another banner, and have succeeded in doing so, according to those on and around the team.
Earlier this season, NBA teams got very good news when the league considerably raised its debt limit, from $275 million each to $425 million each thanks to its new 11-year, $77 billion media rights deals that will begin next fall.
That bought every team, including the Celtics, a cushion to weather losses if they wanted to use it.
In February, Fitch Ratings boosted the NBA’s credit rating from “A-minus” to “A.” Don’t worry about the NBA owners.
But if the Celtics don’t make it out of this second-round meeting with the Knicks — and fail to defend their title just as the past five NBA champions have done so — the degree of fallout is uncertain. Expensive consultants aren’t needed to advise against spending $500 million on a roster that didn’t return to the conference finals.
That won’t be and shouldn’t be on the minds of the Celtics players. But make no mistake that the chatter across the league about the existential threat this Celtics team faces will only increase with each loss, a much more serious consequence than how it might affect players’ and coaches’ reputations, legacies and any other such noise that usually fills the NBA ecosystem each spring.
