By Conor Ryan
March 20, 2025 | 6:50 PM
New Celtics owner William Chisholm has said all the right things since news broke on Thursday morning that a group led by him agreed to purchase the NBA franchise for $6.1 billion — the highest sum paid for a sports team in North American history.
Speaking to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the managing partner at Symphony Technology Group and Georgetown, Mass. native stressed that he plans on keeping the Celtics’ contention window ajar for the foreseeable future.
“This process to buy the team started just under 50 years ago when I had my 7th birthday and attended a game at the old Boston Garden,” Chisholm told Charania. “I was hooked ever since. I’ve been a rabid fan ever since. I bleed green. I love the Celtics. When this opportunity came up, I couldn’t pass it up.
“Wyc has done an incredible job running this franchise. So why would you mess that up? The team is in a great place right now, and I’m very sensitive to that. Wyc [Grousbeck], Brad [Stevens] and Joe [Mazzulla] have done amazing jobs and that’s all goodness that we want to continue.”
Despite the steep financial commitment doled out by Chisholm and his group to acquire the Celtics, Boston’s new owner could begin his tenure on a high note.
“My approach is to win and raise banners,” Chisholm told Charania. “That’s in the near term and the long term. I’ve had a couple of sit-downs with Brad and it’s been about aligning our goals, and extending the window of this team. The plans that Wyc and Brad have laid out make perfect sense to me.”
The Celtics are built to win both now and in the years ahead, with their two franchise pillars in Jayson Tatum (27 years old) and Jaylen Brown (28) in the prime of their careers and both signed through at least 2029.
Key cogs like Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, and Payton Pritchard are signed through 2028, while Boston’s upcoming offseason only features three pending free agents in Al Horford, Luke Kornet, and Torrey Craig.
So long as Chisholm and his group remain committed to keeping this already stacked roster intact, the Celtics stand a chance to repeat as champions this spring — while remaining entrenched as the top team to beat in the Eastern Conference for years to come.
But even with a majority of Boston’s roster linked to long-term deals, Chisholm and Co. still have plenty of tough choices to make in the months and years ahead when it comes to charting out the longevity of this current contention window, given the incoming repeater tax penalties set to swell the franchise’s payroll.
Chisholm has two looming decisions as the Celtics’ new owner.
The Celtics are well-positioned to contend for however long this roster remains intact.
But after Boston’s latest playoff push ends in either May or June, the Celtics will have to brace themselves for a sizable spike in their total payroll.
With Tatum’s supermax extension (five years, $313 million) set to kick in for the 2025-26 season and the current collective bargaining agreement crafted to deter stacked rosters from remaining intact, Boston is on pace to set the record books with its operating costs.
As noted by MassLive’s Brian Robb, the Celtics’ current committed payroll for the upcoming 2025-26 season is already at $225 million — and that’s without retaining familiar faces like Horford and Kornet.
Such is the cost of doing business when it comes to keeping two All-NBA talents in Tatum and Brown signed long-term, while also keeping a stacked depth chart around them in place.
But Boston’s decision to flex its fiscal power over the last few years in order to max out this window has them set to get shredded by the CBA’s hefty repeater tax penalties. According to Robb, along with Boston’s projected $233 in full roster payroll next year, the Celtics are also set to be hit with a whopping $280 million in luxury taxes.
That stands as a $513 million payroll for next season, easily clearing the record-setting $388 million payroll that the 2023-24 Warriors had to stomach as a result of their steep contract payouts and luxury-tax infractions.
In other words, Chisholm and Boston’s new ownership group will have to stomach a reality where they’ll likely be frontrunners once again in 2025-26, but also paying more than double their already steep payroll to keep most of the gang together.
Will this new ownership group have the appetite to handle those taxes if it gives the Celtics to hang another couple of banners in the years ahead?
If not, Boston’s new leadership might have to make the tough call to shed a contract or two off its books in order to bring down some of those tax-related costs.
So long as both Tatum and Brown remain in place, the Celtics should still field a competitive roster for several years — which could make an older veteran like Jrue Holiday or an impact talent with injury concerns like Kristaps Porzingis expendable if Boston is trying to dump contracts off their books.
Robb noted that dealing Holiday’s contract ($32.4 million cap hit next season) would not only remove that $32 million commitment off the payroll, but also cut down the team’s luxury-tax bill from $280 million to $68 million.
The optics may not be kind to a new ownership group if they make the call to dump a contract from a key cog on this roster. But it might be a necessary decision in order to keep this Tatum-Brown core humming along for 2025-26 and beyond.
One avenue that Chisholm and Co. could take in order to maximize the long-term revenue streams of the Celtics is to explore building their own arena somewhere in Boston or the surrounding area in the years ahead.
“Chisholm is not going to pay $6.1 billion for the Celtics and remain content with being a tenant at TD Garden,” The Boston Globe’s Gary Washburn wrote Thursday. “He most certainly will want to build a basketball arena in Boston. A model for Chisholm is Steve Ballmer, who paid $2 billion for the Clippers in 2014 (boy, those were the days, huh?).”
The Celtics would generate a steady profit if they outright owned their venue, an untenable scenario at the moment at TD Garden, which is owned by Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs and Delaware North.
As noted by Washburn, Grousbeck and the Celtics signed a 15-year extension to their current lease on Causeway Street that expires in 2036. As such, Chisholm and this new ownership group have ample time to try and chart a plan for the funding and development of a new arena in Boston if it is a path they want to take.
The Celtics taking to the court in a home venue away from Causeway Street would take some time getting used to, nor will it be easy to find a location that matches the convenience (especially transportation-wise) of their current venue.
But it might be the best long-term option for the Celtics if they intend to spend heavily for the next decade.
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