Boston Celtics 2022 Offseason Primer

2021-22 Boston Celtics The season was a wild ride.From wondering if the Celtics will have a play-in tournament in late 2021 to joining Game 6 in 2022 NBA FinalsIt was a pretty trip.

Now it’s time to turn the page into the 2022-23 season. It starts in the 2022 off-season.

This guide is not intended to answer all the questions about what the Celtics can do. It’s what the Celtics are working on and what the Celtics can reasonably do this summer.

We’ve covered everything, so let’s dive in!

player

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Guaranteed contract

Jaylen Brown-$ 28.7 million

Aaron Nesmith-$ 3.8 million

Payton Pritchard-$ 2.2 million

Marcus Smart-$ 17.2 million

Jayson Tatum-$ 30.4 million

DanielTheis-$ 8.7 million

Derrick White-$ 16.9 million

Grant Williams-$ 4.3 million

Robert Williams-$ 10.9 million

Partial and non-guaranteed contracts

Malik Fitz-$ 1.8 Million-Non-Warranty

Sam Hauser-$ 1.6 million- $ 300,000 guaranteed (if team options are exercised)

Al Horford-$ 26.5 million- $ 19.5 million guaranteed

Juwan Morgan – $ 1.8 million – non-guaranteed (if team options are exercised)

Nik Stauskas-$ 2.2 million-Non-guaranteed

Dead money

Demetrius Jackson-$ 92,857

Potential free agent

Sam Hauser – Restricted, non-bird rights (if team options are denied)

Luke Cornet – Unlimited Non-Bird Rights

Juwan Morgan – Limited, non-bird rights (if team options are denied)

Matt Ryan – Limited – Two-way, non-bird rights

Brodric Thomas – Restricted – Two-way, non-bird rights

Overview

Boston already has nine roster spots to discuss with players with guaranteed contracts. You should add Al Horford and Sam Hauser to that list. Horford goes nowhere and the contract may be guaranteed before the season. Hauser fully demonstrates that he is worth trying to maintain and grow for another year. In that sense, he’s kind of like a pseudo-draft topic.

That is, four open roster spots remain in the standard 15 roster. Some reminders:

The team can carry 15 players with a standard contract for the regular season

Teams can carry two players in a regular season two-way transaction

-Teams can carry up to 20 players (standard and two-way contracts) during the off-season

It’s quite possible that at least a few people from the group of Malik Fitz, Luke Cornett, Juwan Morgan, Matt Ryan, Nik Stauskas and Brodrick Thomas will be back next season. They can all fight it in a spot training camp on the edge of the bench. It is possible that Ryan will return to Boston / Main with another two-way contract. Only Stauskas has a warranty date (July 15th) worth watching to decide if he will return to the camp.

Currently, counting Horford and Hauser, Boston will pay $ 151.3 million for 11 players. That’s just about $ 2 million more than the $ 149 million luxury tax expected for the 2022-23 season. Boston has also exceeded a $ 155.7 million tax apron (a team is severely restricted), taking into account the roster and incentive entry.

tool

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2022 NBA draft Choose

・ Overall # 53

Thanks to Derrick White’s trade, Boston doesn’t have the first round pick in the 2022 NBA Draft.

Signature exception

-Taxpayer mid-level exception-6,392,000 dollars

The Celtics have a taxpayer MLE because they are on top of a luxurious apron. Even if they temporarily sink under the apron, they will hard cap the team, so you can’t use the full taxpayer MLE anyway. The Celtics will also not be able to use the twice-yearly exception ($ 4,050,000) because they are above or near the tax apron / hard cap.

A reminder about how a team gets a hard cap in an apron:

Sign the player with a portion of the non-taxpayer MLE that is larger than the taxpayer MLE

・ Use of exceptions twice a year

・ Acquisition of players by sign and trade

Traded player exception

Evan Fournier- $ 17.1 million – expires until July 18th

Juancho Hernangomez – $ 6.9 million – expires on January 19th

Dennis Schroder-$ 5.9 Million – Expirs until February 10th

Bol Bol-$ 2.2 million – expires until February 10th

PJ Dozier-$ 1.9 Million – Expirs until February 10th

Bruno Fernando-$ 1.8 million-expires on February 10th

Enes Freedom – $ 1.7 million – Expirs until February 10th

Tristan Thompson-$ 1.4 million – expires until July 7th

Precautions regarding the mechanism of TPE:

-Can be used to acquire players through trades or waiver claims. It cannot be used to sign a player.

• A TPE cannot be aggregated (combined) with the calling player’s salary or another TPE to bring more salary.

-Players acquired through the TPE must have the applicable salary matching transaction rules within the TPE in addition to the salary.

・ The expiration date of TPE expires at the end of business on the stated date, and the expiration date cannot be extended.

Tradeable players

There are no trade-restricted players in the Celtics. All currently signed players are eligible to trade at any time in the future.

For partial / non-guaranteed players, they only count the guaranteed amount of the next salary in the transaction. Example: Al Horford considers the transaction salary to be $ 26.5 million, compared to $ 19.5 million. On the acquisition side, Horford has a starting salary of $ 26.5 million.

Teams can and often do so with more guarantees for players to include the team in transactions that need to match salary.

Tradeable draft rights

・ Juhann Begarin

・ Yammada

Boston holds the draft rights for Juhann Begarin (2021 NBA Draft) and Yam Madar (2020 NBA Draft). Both have been playing abroad since they were drafted.

Overview

It’s usually annoying to be limited to regular transactions to acquire taxpayers’ MLEs, TPEs, and talent. Fortunately, Boston has a relatively good list. They can reasonably expect the top 9-10 players from before the season to come back.

In addition, taxpayers MLE need to have more spending than usual, as the majority of the NBA has exceeded this summer’s salary cap and about half of the league dances around luxury taxes and hard caps. I have.

As an off-the-shelf title candidate, Boston is an attractive destination for veterans looking for both final shots and potential rotation spots.

Using a larger TPE is a question of how deeply Celtics ownership is more involved in luxury tax than anything else. Adding players who earn between $ 7 million and $ 17 million through MLE and TPE pushes Boston into an unknown territory up to potential luxury tax claims.

Photo by Garrett Elwood / NBAE via Getty Images

needs

Proven Wing Depth-Ideally, this is a 3 & D player who can find the rest of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum who were badly missing throughout the playoffs. However, the Celtics had to settle for a “3” or “D” because the market lacks the depth of players to meet both needs.

Another big – Rob Williams, Al Horford, Grant Williams, Daniel Theis quartet is pretty solid. But it would be great to have another big, ideally 4/5 option. This is especially true given the health concerns around Rob Williams.

-Another playmaker-is this a mythical “pure point guard” or “floor general”? perhaps. But it’s difficult to fill it. Instead, this is about Marcus Smart regularly missing out on time and Boston adding depth to a slightly lacking position in the postseason. This can range from big to small needs, depending on who you talk to.

question

Will the Celtics take ownership? – This is a fair question, as Boston has cut salaries in recent years to avoid taxes. Boston barely evaded taxes in 2022 and offers Celtics owners a great bonus check from the tax team. Now, do they look back and reinvest it in the team using MLE and TPE?

・ How deep do you need? – Boston can use the layout above, but the team is ready to bring back all the rotation players. And it’s a rotation that’s mostly filled with young players who have just entered the NBA Finals. How confusing is the balance by adding players who need minutes, touches and shots?

・ Is it time to make an all-in move? – Does the Celtics need to see how close they are to Banner 18 and make big deals to get closer? What does the transaction look like? for whom? Who will be sent?

Overview

Next week or so, the Celtics Blog will have several articles showing some targets for each of the above needs. These include players that can be earned through MLE, TPE, or standard trading.

There are also some articles that try to answer the above three questions. Before posting an article, something may help answer these questions. At that point, the focus is on analyzing what happened.

It’s the off-season, and the Boston Celtics haven’t been reset for the first time in a while. They haven’t rebuilt either. Instead, they hope to be added to the team ready to take the next step towards Banner 18.