2025 East Semifinals: (2) Boston Celtics Vs. (3) New York Knicks

One of their 3 guards will be gone. Derrick White might be a good fit on the Rockets.

I also think they will give away Porzingis for the salary dump.

 

If Tatum misses next (2025 - 26) season and they are in the Lottery, is the league going to do them a favor in the 2026 Lottery Drawing?

When everything works out, Porzingis is a nice player.

The problem is that everything doesn't work out for him on a regular basis and thus any team trading for him needs to consider him a luxury rather than a key piece that can be relied upon.

At $30.7 million next season, teams considering trading for him need to think long and hard about if their roster and team salary can carry Porzingis as a luxury item.


I have Holiday as TBD negative value and some Boston fans would prefer to keep White. It will be up to their Leadership (FO and Owner) to decide if they will move White for assets or move Holiday for whatever.

Is Brown the other Guard that you were referring to or somebody else?

 

I think the other guard is Payton Pritchard. I can't see Celtics shopping Brown after giving him that extension but you never know these days.

 

Only if they trade their franchise player to LA.

 

The question is what is their goal with a trading players. They are expected to be severely over the salary cap and they don't have a 28 or 29 1st round pick.

If it is purely to get under the luxury cap thresholds, then moving on from Horford, Holliday and Porzingis makes sense. However, they are not going to get a lot of draft capital back for those guys.

If their aim is to get some draft capital for the next iteration of their team, they will need to trade White and/or Brown.

They could obviously do a mix of both.

 

I agree that they will need to pick something of a direction for next season.

As you noted, Horford, Holiday and Porzingis won't bring in much in the way of Draft Picks.

• Horford needs a Contract and will be 39 this Summer. Teams interested in him might just offer him a modest contract and avoid dealing with Boston if possible.
• Porzingis will be 30 in August and tends to miss a decent amount of games each season. As I mentioned earlier, teams should view him a Luxury rather than a key piece for their roster. [2025-26: $30,731,707]
• Holiday will be 35 this Summer. I have him on the decline and his contract is scary with three years left. [2025-26: $32,400,000, 2026-27: $34,800,000, 2027-28: $37,200,000]

Players with positive Value

• Brown will be 29 in October and the Celtics need to decide if they can get everything ramped up for the 2026-27 season when they are deciding what to do. If it will take until the 2027-28 season to get everything ramped up again, then they might decide to trade him. Teams should view him as a Robin rather than a Batman. He is owed a huge amount of money. [2025-26: $53,142,264, 2026-27: $57,078,728, 2027-28: $61,015,192, 2028-29: $54,951,656]
• White will be 31 this Summer. His contract isn't bad. [2025-26: $28,100,000, 2026-27: $30,348,000, 2027-28: $32,596,000, 2028-29: $34,844,000 (PO) ]
• Pritchard is 27 and is a good spark off the bench. He is on a favorable contract for teams considering trading for him. [2025-26: $7,232,143, 2026-27: $7,767,857, 2027-28: $9,303,571)
• Hauser is 30 and is a good three point shooter. [2025-26: $10,044,644, 2026-27: $10,848,215, 2027-28: $11,651,785, 2028-29: $12,455,356]

 

Supposedly the #1 goal of the new ownership is dumping salary. Getting back crumbs for Holiday and Porzingis is probably acceptable.

Trading White or Brown seems very unlikely IMO because putting a competitive product on the floor for the next few years is probably their #2 goal. They know fans would blast them for completely dismantling the team.

After Sam Presti, I think Brad Stevens might be the smartest GM in the NBA. After dumping Holiday, Porzingis, etc to chop luxury taxes down to something reasonable, I expect the Celtics to field a playoff team next year even without Jayson Tatum.

 

That would roll up a new Chapter in the LA- Boston Bird vs Magic rivalry.

 

Brown has negative trade value with that contract. I used to want to get Brown - until that supermax thing. That salary rule was one of the dumbest. Why would you want to force a salary with a voting result?

 

Due to prior cases.

This is more about looking out for oneself than the team.

 

I'm talking about the league rule giving eligibility based on All NBA, MVP, and DPOY award. All of those awards are voted, not on objective criteria. What makes it worse is that those awards are for performance of ONE SINGLE SEASON. You could have a fluke elite season and you got it.

 

Fluke is not the word.....you still have to beat 99% of competition....

All NBA is harder to achieve than Normal All Star.

They try to reach financial parity but we have seen that there can be no real parity.....

 

Of course you have to be very good to get to All NBA level. But you don't even have to be a top 20 player to achieve that for ONE season. Brown is the perfect example of that. His All NBA season was the best season of his career. He averaged 26.6 ppg on 58% TS. Those are very good but not really elite numbers. He has never been a great 3pt shooter. He has never been a great playmaker.

A supermax player is supposed to be your franchise player you build around. Would you build around a guy like Jaylen Brown? Only if you couldn't find a better one. But if he's your franchise player you build around, you probably won't be a championship contender. The irony is that Boston already had a franchise player. But they were forced to pay Brown the supermax or risked losing their second best player. Now they are facing the prospect of having to break up their core. And Brown won't be easy to trade exactly because of the supermax.

 

Celtics I like to have the Rockets goes:
Brown
White
Pritchard

Rocket River

 

Shaq trying not to slip up and make some sort of gay joke about Dwight replacing him last night is quality comedy.