The Boston Celtics were eliminated from the 2025 NBA postseason on Friday by the New York Knicks, but their season — and this entire era in team history — ended the moment Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles in Game 4. Boston was already in a somewhat precarious position entering the 2025 offseason.
Their projected payroll for next year, before even considering potentially re-signing Al Horford or Luke Kornet, is $493 million with luxury taxes included. That was going to be hard to swallow even as two-time defending champions. But after an early elimination and with the knowledge that Tatum will presumably miss the entire 2025-26 season, it’s downright untenable. The Celtics are going to look very different next season.
The question is just how different. Are we talking cosmetic changes or a full-scale teardown? The answer is probably somewhere in between. Just dumping Sam Hauser into someone’s mid-level exception isn’t going to cut it here. They’re probably not going to, say, offer Tatum for Giannis Antetokounmpo, or actively shop Jaylen Brown for a haul of picks, but core players are going to move. This isn’t just about saving money next season. It’s about rebooting a team both on the court and on the balance sheet so that when Tatum returns, the Celtics have a roster that’s sustainably competitive.
So, how do they get there? These moves are starting points. Each could be made in a vacuum or together. They do not rebuild the Celtics completely, but they are concepts that start moving Boston in the right direction ahead of what will probably be a gap year. Even if it makes the Celtics worse next season, it pushes them towards that goal of sustainable winning upon Tatum’s return.
Trade 1: Kristaps Porziņģis to Atlanta
- Celtics get: Terance Mann, Georges Niang, No. 22 pick
- Hawks get: Kristaps Porziņģis
This trade accomplishes two things for the Celtics, but comes with one meaningful drawback. Obviously, getting a first-round pick in a good draft is nice. This also saves the Celtics a nice chunk of change. Mann and Niang make around $7 million less next season than Porziņģis does. Factor the tax savings in and we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in saved payroll here. The drawback, though, is that Mann has three years left on his deal. If Boston doesn’t think he can be a consistent rotation player, they’d be taking back a pretty bad contract.
That’s part of the motivation for the Hawks. Atlanta isn’t as pressed for 2025-26 savings as Boston, but with new deals looming for Trae Young and Dyson Daniels, shaving that long-term money is helpful. With Sacramento’s incoming No. 13 pick and so much youth on the roster, the Hawks can afford to punt away the No. 22 pick.
The basketball fit is interesting. Porziņģis obviously doesn’t move especially well, but he still has an enormous catch radius, so Young can throw him plenty of lobs. More importantly, his shooting goes a long way towards offsetting the spacing limitations that Atlanta’s core forwards impose on one another. Daniels, Jalen Johnson and Zaccharie Risacher are all shaky shooters, and that hurts each of them as drivers because they have to operate in a crowded paint. Onyeka Okongwu’s growth as a shooter helps on that front, and getting another shooting big man would as well. Porziņģis and Okongwu could share center minutes and perhaps even play some together.
This isn’t a return commensurate with Porziņģis’ talent, but his medical situation limits his value severely. He’s an expiring contract as much as he’s a player in this deal. Perhaps he’s a big enough name to get Young excited about re-signing before his 2026 free agency, and he might help on the court, but he can’t be relied upon enough to generate a major return anymore.
Trade 2: Jrue Holiday to Orlando
- Celtics get: Wendell Carter Jr., Jusuf Nurkić
- Magic get: Jrue Holiday
- Hornets get: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, No. 28 pick, No. 46 pick
Holiday, like Porziņģis, has lost a fair bit of trade value over the past year or so. Aside from his offensive decline, the three years and $97 million or so left on his contract is going to scare apron-conscious teams away. He’s still such a good defender and teammate that he will attract interest, but the market is going to be smaller than you’d imagine.
Orlando is going hunting for a guard this offseason. They’ve widely been linked to offense-first players like Anfernee Simons, but what if they went the other way and doubled down on their defense? Imagine trying to score against a backcourt that includes both Holiday and Jalen Suggs. That sounds miserable. Holiday’s shooting alone would be beneficial on offense, though he obviously isn’t quite the creator they’re looking for. Still, the Magic could give this a go for a few years and then potentially trade him again when there’s less time left on his contract. The cost here just isn’t that prohibitive. They’d still have all of their future draft picks to use in follow-up trades.
Boston needs to find a center somewhere. If Porziņģis isn’t gone in an offseason trade, he likely walks as a 2026 free agent. Horford is nearing retirement. So, how about a younger big man who is often compared to Horford? Carter is not nearly as good as Horford has been for Boston, but he’s stylistically similar as a big man who can both shoot and move. More importantly, he’s cost-controlled. He’ll make less than $11 million next season, and then gets around $60 million in the three years that follow. That’s great value for a starting center on a team that is presumably paying out two super max contracts to Tatum and Brown, and he obviously fits stylistically into Boston’s preferred five-out style of play.
Would Orlando be willing to move Carter? That depends on how confident they are in Mo Wagner returning from a torn ACL at full strength. They also have Goga Bitadze and Jonathan Isaac in the frontcourt, so they’re relatively deep, though in fairness, Isaac, for medical purposes, probably can’t ever play starter minutes. They’d likely have to go out and find another center to help hold down the fort until Wagner returns. That’s doable, and even if the Magic would be taking on a scary Holiday contract, they’d be getting off of Caldwell-Pope’s deal. Considering the season he just had, that idea probably appeals to the Magic.
So, why isn’t Caldwell-Pope just going to Boston? Well, a few reasons. Obviously, the Celtics don’t want to touch that contract, but that’s not our main hiccup. No, Caldwell-Pope and Carter combine to make $71,500 more than Holiday does next season. That means, in a two-for-one trade, the Celtics would be hard-capped at the first apron for taking back more money than they sent out. They could include another contract, but then they’d be aggregating, which hard caps them at the second apron. That might not bother them much, but we’re going to play it safe without knowing what other moves Boston might have up its sleeve and avoiding hard caps altogether.
So we’ll loop in Charlotte, who has Nurkić’s expiring contract to swap for Caldwell-Pope’s two-year deal. The Hornets get two draft picks for cooperating, but it also wouldn’t hurt them to get a respected veteran in the door. The top seven most-played Hornets last year were all 26 or younger. There are older players on the roster, but few who played significant roles. Caldwell-Pope could slide in easily as a 3-and-D wing that could help show the youngsters how to win.
Trade 3: Derrick White to Dallas
- Celtics get: P.J. Washington, Caleb Martin, Dwight Powell, 2029 first-round pick (via Lakers), 2032 first-round pick
- Mavericks get: Derrick White
Porziņģis and Holiday are obvious trade candidates. They’re expensive, and given their age and medical histories, probably not realistic parts of the next Tatum-centric contender in Boston. The Celtics could move both, fiddle with the fringes, and otherwise try to win with the same three-man core of Tatum, Brown and White. Given the power of inertia in NBA decision-making, this is probably the likeliest outcome.
But for a variety of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to explore a White trade. For starters, he’ll be 32 on opening night of the 2026-27 season. He’s older than he seems, and it would probably behoove Boston to get a bit younger. He’s also the rare role player who fits on basically any team. That is why, ultimately, Mikal Bridges netted five first-round picks in a trade. High-end 3-and-D players that can also do some creation are worth their weight in gold. The Celtics could get a haul for him and use it to turn around and rebuild their next contending roster.
Finally, maximizing Payton Pritchard’s on-ball reps next season is going to be important. He’s insanely cheap moving forward at around $23 million in total for the next three seasons, and he just won Sixth Man of the Year. The Celtics need to figure out if he can be the starting point guard before Tatum comes back, because if he can, having a starting point guard at that price opens a lot of doors for them. Moving the incumbent starting point guard makes it easier to evaluate him next season. And if he fails? Well, congratulations, you’ve helped your own draft pick for next season and you can move him back to his bench role.
If Boston put White on the table, he’d attract interest from around the league, but especially from older contenders. The Lakers, Warriors and Clippers would all love to have him. But think about where the Mavericks are right now, specifically. Their front-court is stuffed to the brim now that Cooper Flagg is coming. They have no ball-handling while Kyrie Irving recovers from a torn ACL. They reportedly do plan to go out and get a point guard, but how easily will any high-usage guard fit with Irving when he returns? And, perhaps most importantly, would such a player fit within Nico Harrison’s “defense wins championships” ethos?
White checks every box. He can be the point guard when Irving is out and the shooting guard when he returns. He’s an excellent defender. Oh, and the Mavericks just faced him in the Finals and lost, so they’re quite aware of how valuable he can be on a playoff run. If the Mavericks are still fully committed to winning in the Davis-Irving window first and foremost, White is perhaps the single best guard they could go out and get to support them.
Now, would I necessarily advise the Mavericks to operate on that timeline? No. They already lack control over their first-round picks between 2027 and 2030. Their asset pool is therefore going to be pretty limited when Flagg reaches his prime and Davis and Irving have aged out of stardom. Nico Harrison was nearly run out of town for trading Luka Dončić. If his machinations eventually cost Dallas Flagg as well, he’d likely go down as the most reviled executive in the history of sports.
But Harrison has made it clear he’s not thinking about the future in Dallas. He’s trying to win a championship right now, and he knows that if he doesn’t, he probably won’t be around for Flagg’s future anyway. So while it may not be the best long-term idea for the franchise, it is in line with what we should reasonably expect from him. A starting five of Irving, Flagg, White, Davis and Dereck Lively would be lethal in a playoff setting, and they’d still be plenty deep behind that core.
As for the Celtics, they get two unprotected first-round picks to use as trade chips elsewhere. In Washington, they get a wing who’s four years younger than White and fits easily next to Tatum and Brown. Heck, he even provides a bit of insurance if Brown’s super max contract ever becomes too onerous and they need to trade it. They could have another starting-caliber forward in place. They know Martin well from the 2023 Eastern Conference finals, and Powell is just a cap filler.
I’d consider a White trade a fairly unlikely proposition, but practically anything should be on the table this summer. He shouldn’t be traded just to be traded, but if someone offers a haul, there are plenty of reasons to pull the trigger.
Add Comment