Author: Monojit Mandal
The Heat beat the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, ending the team’s hopes of returning to the NBA Finals this season. The team is currently in a very important summer, thinking about what will happen to its key players and planning how to remain competitive.
The upcoming free agency of Celtics All-Star point guard Jaylen-Brown, who is scheduled to become a free agent next summer and is now entitled to a contract extension, is one of the team’s main concerns. To keep Brown and his core together, Boston must carefully consider how much it is prepared to compromise.
However, the Celtics first team isn’t just worried about Brown. The difficulty of the decision-making process over the coming months is increased by the fact that they also have other important players whose contracts expire this year or soon.
By the Celtics’ own standards, this NBA season has been a failure. Despite adding Malcolm Brogdon to the team in the summer and having Jayson Tatum and Jaylen-Brown selected for the All-NBA team, Boston fell short of expectations. Even the team that had been beaten by the Golden State Warriors in six games was brought back.
At the start of the summer, the Celtics need to make decisions for the long term as well as the short term. They now have 13 players from their 57-win club under contract and need to decide what to do with restricted free agent Grant Williams. The probable rehiring of Williams could put the Celtics at risk of paying the repetition tax, which would be expensive.
In the future, the Celtics should also think about the viability of a team that includes two players who earn a total salary of more than 600 million dollars. Due to his All-NBA selections, Brown is expected to sign a $295 million extension this offseason, and Tatum could sign a $318 million contract the following summer. The Celtics must decide if this investment is in line with their championship aspirations under the new CBA.
Fortunately for the Celtics, Tatum’s contract won’t take effect until the 2025-26 season, so when the roster is complete, the team won’t be in immediate danger of exceeding the second limit of US$189 million.