{"id":41227,"date":"2025-05-18T14:45:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T14:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/41227\/"},"modified":"2025-05-18T14:45:23","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T14:45:23","slug":"whats-next-for-celtics-uncertain-offseason-looms-after-ugly-playoff-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/41227\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s next for Celtics? Uncertain offseason looms after ugly playoff exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

To Jaylen Brown, the Celtics\u2019 38-point elimination-game loss to the Knicks \u201cfelt like death<\/a>.\u201d And in a way, it was.<\/p>\n

Boston\u2019s bid for immortality \u2014 to become the first NBA team since 2018 and the first Celtics squad in more than 50 years to win back-to-back championships \u2014 died Friday night in front of a ravenous crowd at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n

The question now is whether an entire era of Celtics basketball died with it.<\/p>\n

This season\u2019s roster was nearly identical to the one that secured Banner 18 last June. Unlike most NBA champions, the Celtics were able to return their entire rotation, including a starting five that took in a combined salary of $163.4 million.<\/p>\n

But the window for that high-priced, star-studded group was always going to be narrow.<\/p>\n

With extensions for Jayson Tatum, Derrick White and Sam Hauser set to kick in this offseason, resulting in even more onerous luxury tax penalties under the NBA\u2019s collective bargaining agreement, keeping this crew together for another year would cost around $500 million between salaries and tax sanctions \u2014 an untenable sum for any franchise, especially when coupled with the player acquisition restrictions placed on second-apron teams like the Celtics.<\/p>\n

That was true at the start of Boston\u2019s ill-fated playoff run, which ended with a six-game second-round loss to New York that featured three second-half collapses<\/a>, followed by a 119-81 pasting<\/a>. It\u2019s even more undeniable now that Tatum will miss at least a significant chunk of the 2025-26 campaign<\/a> after rupturing his Achilles in Game 4 and undergoing surgery a day later<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the price you pay for trying to go after something, and that\u2019s how it goes,\u201d head coach Joe Mazzulla said.<\/p>\n

Changes are coming. President of basketball operations Brad Stevens \u2014 likely with input from Wyc Grousbeck and new incoming majority owner<\/a> Bill Chisholm \u2014 must decide how sweeping those changes will be.<\/p>\n

Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday \u2014 the two players Stevens acquired last summer to push Boston over the championship hump \u2014 are two logical trade candidates, though both carry concerns that could give other teams pause.<\/p>\n

Porzingis, who will be on a $30.7 million expiring contract, has missed 65 regular-season games over his two Celtics seasons and was rendered borderline unplayable by a mysterious viral illness this postseason. Holiday still is a valuable player, especially on the defensive end, but he turns 35 next month and is set to make more than $32 million in each of the next three seasons, including a player option for 2027-28.<\/p>\n

Holiday also sat out 23 games due to injury this season, including three in the playoffs. That was a trend across the Celtics\u2019 roster. Seven of their top eight players missed more games than they did in 2023-24, with that group collectively logging 44 more DNPs than the previous season. The lone exception: White, who played in 76 games and was the lone Boston starter who did not on the injury report during the postseason.<\/p>\n

Hauser, a core reserve whose salary is set to jump from $2.1 million to $10 million next season, also could be on the trade block. Big men Al Horford and Luke Kornet are impending unrestricted free agents; both should garner external interest after Horford remained productive at age 38<\/a> and Kornet enjoyed the best season of his career<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Holiday said he still views the Celtics as championship contenders<\/a> even without Tatum and hopes he isn\u2019t traded. Horford said he needs to take time before deciding what he\u2019ll do next season. Kornet plans to \u201cfigure out (free agency) stuff when it comes to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest unknown involves players like White and Brown. Both are locked up for four more seasons and should be foundational pieces. But they\u2019re also Boston\u2019s top trade chips (along with dirt-cheap Sixth Man of the Year<\/a> Payton Pritchard). If the Celtics don\u2019t expect to have Tatum in the fold for much or any of next season, would they consider moving White or Brown, recouping assets, cutting down their payroll and treating 2025-26 as a reset year of sorts, with an eye toward returning to contention with a healthy Tatum the following year?<\/p>\n

All options, outside of trading a rehabbing Tatum, could be in play this offseason.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know the ins and outs of what all goes into it, but I do know it\u2019s rare to bring an entire team back from the previous season, outside of one or maybe two guys,\u201d Hauser said. \u201cBut our whole rotation came back, which I know was really rare. So you just never know if you\u2019re ever going to play with a certain guy again after a season ends, even after you come off a championship. That\u2019s what kind of hurts. And we have a lot of good guys in that locker room, and the thought of not having someone on the team next year, it\u2019s hard to wrap your head around it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there is a lot of uncertainty now, especially with Jayson\u2019s injury. I don\u2019t really know his time to return, but it doesn\u2019t sound like it\u2019s going to be soon. So it makes you wonder, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally Published: May 17, 2025 at 1:14 PM EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To Jaylen Brown, the Celtics\u2019 38-point elimination-game loss to the Knicks \u201cfelt like death.\u201d And in a way,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3766],"tags":[7,45,75,3798,46,11591,78,77,2675,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-41227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-celtics","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston","10":"tag-boston-celtics","11":"tag-bostonceltics","12":"tag-celtics","13":"tag-celtics-offseason","14":"tag-jaylen-brown","15":"tag-jayson-tatum","16":"tag-joe-mazzulla","17":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114529378330038282","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}