March 24, 2025 | 12:56 PM
The Celtics are a pricey basketball team, and they’re about to get even pricier.
Jayson Tatum’s supermax extension has yet to kick in. Jaylen Brown is already making north of $50 million per year. Jrue Holiday and Derrick White have inked nine-figure extensions.
Boston is currently in the league’s second tax apron, but they won’t be able to stay there for long, Celtics governor Wyc Grousbeck said during a recent interview on WEEI.
“It’s not the luxury tax bill, it’s the basketball penalties,” Grousbeck said. “The new CBA was designed by the league to stop teams from going crazy and they decided that it’s not good enough to just go after the wallets because then the fans are like ‘hey, find someone who can afford to spend whatever – $500 million per year or whatever it is.”
The word “apron” refers to salary thresholds set by the league. The NBA salary cap is $140.588 million this year. It’s not a hard cap, so teams can choose to spend more if they like. The luxury tax level begins at $170,814,000.
Spending more than $178.132 million puts a team into the first apron. Spending more than $188.931 million puts a team into the second apron. According to Spotrac, the Celtics’ total cap allocations stand at $199,373,751, about $4.4 million over the second apron.
The basketball penalties that come with being in the second apron include:
-Not being able to use the mid-level exception to sign players
-Not being able to use cash in trades
-Not being able to trade first-round picks seven years out.
-Not being able to execute sign-and-trade deals that keep the team over the cap
-Having their first round pick automatically move to the end of the round if they’ve been in the second apron three out of five years
These penalties are significant, even for owners who can withstand the financial hits that come with being deep into the luxury tax, Grousbeck said.
“The basketball penalties mean it’s even more of a premium now to have your basketball general manager be brilliant and lucky because you’ve got to navigate, because you can’t stay in the second apron,” Grousbeck said. “Nobody will. I predict for the next 40 years of the CBA no one is going to stay nobody is going to stay in the second apron more than two years.”
The Celtics are already in the second apron. That’s not including the roughly $20 million pay raise due to Tatum next year. Derrick White’s salary is scheduled to jump from $20 million to $28 million. Sam Hauser’s salary will jump from $2.1 million to around $10 million.
The Celtics have their entire starting five under contract through next season. But, after that, the luxury tax implications could force some really tough decisions.
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