List of Boston Celtics after trade deadline and cap reset

Brad Stevens’ tenure as president of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics has been busy. Stevens made nine trades in the roughly nine months he led the Celtics front office. This includes three separate trades Stevens made on trade deadline day.

Yet despite all the roster movement, only four players are different from those who finished last season on the Celtics. Five, if you count Luke Kornet who only recently joined the team.

But what Stevens has done in less than a year is set up Boston’s ceiling sheet in a different way than he inherited. And it also took a few twists and turns along the way.

What we’re going to try to do here, in this article and two more to come in the following days, is explain where things stand with the Celtics roster and cap sheet, look at a big question Boston needs to respond before next season, then try to analyze what the long-term plan might be.

Do you have all that? Good. Let’s get started, okay? And to start, we have to go back to… well… the beginning.

When Brad Stevens took over from Danny Ainge on June 2, 2021, no one would have guessed he would be making his first trade just 16 days later. And it was a big one.

On June 18, Stevens sent Kemba Walker, the No. 16 pick in the 2021 NBA draft (later to become Alperen Sengun) and a 2023 second-round pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder in exchange for Al Horford and Moses Brown.

Immediately afterwards, it seemed like Stevens’ goal was clear. He was cleaning up the Celtics’ cover sheet by stripping the two remaining years of Walker’s contract in exchange for the cheaper two years (really one year, plus partially guaranteed money in a second year) for Horford. If that had been all Stevens had done, it would have looked like Boston was gearing up to become a space team in the summer of 2022.

Even when Stevens made his next deal, to bring in Josh Richardson using the rest of traded player Gordon Hayward’s exception, it looked like the Celtics were still keeping the books clean. Richardson had just one year left on his contract when Boston acquired him, keeping the 2022 cap space dream alive.

Then… Stevens started giving out hair extensions like my grandma used to give out those funny strawberry candies. You know the ones in the package that looked like a strawberry? And sometimes they were really good, but sometimes they had this gross filling? But I digress…

After overtime, all hope of clearing the decks for a free agent run in the summer of 2022 was gone.

Photo by Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images

At this point, Brad Stevens has added more than $220 million in salary to Boston’s books from 2022-23 through 2025-26. That includes extensions for Marcus Smart and Robert Williams, at least $14.5 million for Al Horford and between $70-80 million for Derrick White and Daniel Theis.

As it stands, here’s how the Celtics’ cap sheet looks for the 2022-23 season:

Guaranteed salary – 9 players

Jaylen Brown – $26.7 million

Aaron Nesmith – $3.8 million

Payton Pritchard – $2.2 million

Smart Marcus – $17.2 million

Jayson Tatum – $30.3 million

Daniel Théis – $8.7 million

Derrick Blanc – $16.4 million

Grant Williams – $4.3 million

Robert Williams – $10.7 million

Partially guaranteed salary – 2 players

Sam Hauser – $300,000 of $1.5M guaranteed (if team option is exercised)

Al Horford – $14.5m of $26.5m guaranteed

Free Agents – 2 players

Luke Kornet – $1.8M cap maintained

Brodric Thomas – $1.8M ceiling maintained

dead money

Demetrius Jackson – $93,000

That’s roughly $140 million in guaranteed money for 11 players, plus dead money for Demetrius Jackson. And, as long as Hauser and Horford remain on the roster, their salaries count toward the fully guaranteed amounts of $1.5 million and $26.5 million, respectively.

Given that the luxury tax line is expected to be $147 million, it’s a safe bet the Boston Celtics will approach the 2022 offseason as if they were a taxpayer for the 2022-23 season.

Let’s reverse it and look even further, shall we? For the 2023-24 season, the Celtics have committed nearly $130 million for just nine players:

Jaylen Brown – $30.7 million

Aaron Nesmith – $5.6M (team option to be exercised by October 31, 2022)

Payton Pritchard – $4.0M (team option to be exercised by October 31, 2022)

Smart Marcus – $18.6 million

Jayson Tatum – $32.6 million

Daniel Théis – $9.1 million

Derrick Blanc – $17.6 million

Robert Williams – $11.6 million

Demetrius Jackson – $93,000 (last dead money season for Jackson)

It looks like we’ll have to add an expansion here for Grant Williams somewhere too, but that’s a little hard to project at the moment. Let’s see how Grant fares throughout the upcoming playoffs. That should give us a better idea of ​​what things could look like for him this summer.

The luxury tax line for this season is expected to be around $154 million. The need to fill seven spots on the roster with just $24 million of wiggle room means Boston will likely be a taxpayer again in 2023-24.

Photo by Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images

Brad Stevens said the addition of Derrick White and Daniel Theis at the trade deadline, along with the signing of Marcus Smart and Robert Williams (and since-traded Josh Richardson) were aimed at giving the Celtics “good players who fit our roster who are signed on long-term contracts’.

Mission accomplished.

White already seems like a perfect fit. Theis is the Theis everyone loved before, and he’s paid pretty well for a great semi-versatile backup. The extensions of Smart and Rob Williams seem more than fair, considering how much they bring to the team on both sides of the pitch.

However… it’s still a team with a lot of vacancies. And, given the makeup of recent champions, they might be one star short. But maybe that star is growing internally (Where are you at “Lob” Williams fans?). Or maybe they’ve got two stars and a whole host of really top-notch roleplayers to make an endgame with.

The point here, in this first three-part episode, is that Brad Stevens gave the Celtics plenty of options moving forward and the only one he took off the table was an outright agent signing. free via a ceiling space. Signature and exchange agreements, as well as traditional exchanges, remain on the table. And now Boston has the contracts to stack up to be in the mix for any player who breaks loose in the trade market.

But… we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. We will come back to this last point in part 3 of this series. Next, we’ll ask and attempt to answer a question that’s on every Celtics fan’s mind: what’s going on with Al Horford this summer?