trimmed more than $350 million<\/a> from their payroll between salaries and luxury tax penalties. Their offseason departures did not tank the team\u2019s hopes of contending, like most expected \u00a0\u2014 the 33-18 Celtics entered deadline day with the NBA\u2019s best offensive rating, 11th-best defensive rating, second-best net rating and fifth-best record \u2014\u00a0and this latest round of moves involved only one player who was seeing regular minutes.<\/p>\n(The team had yet to announce the Minott and Tillman trades as of Thursday evening, listing both as out for Friday\u2019s home game against the Miami Heat for personal reasons.)<\/p>\n
Boston, which has three games remaining before the NBA All-Star break, now must replenish the back end of its bench\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and do so methodically, as it sits less than $1 million below the luxury tax line.<\/p>\n
The Celtics filled one of their open roster spots Thursday by converting rookie center Amari Williams\u2019 two-way contract to a standard NBA deal. Williams, a second-round draft pick out of Kentucky, upped his involvement with the big club in recent weeks, serving as Mazzulla\u2019s third-choice big man behind starter Neemias Queta and top backup Garza.<\/p>\n
His role likely will shrink following the addition of Vucevic, but Williams already was playing over the far more experienced Boucher and Tillman, so his promotion was no surprise. His contract conversion left the Celtics with three vacancies on their 15-man roster, at least two of which they must fill within the next 14 days to meet the NBA-mandated minimum of 14 players on standard contracts.<\/p>\n
![\"Portland](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/celticsms15.jpg\")
Portland Trail Blazers guard Sidy Cissoko (91) and guard Shaedon Sharpe (17) double team Boston Celtics forward Amari Williams (77) during the second half of a NBA game at the Garden. (Photo By Matt Stone\/Boston Herald).<\/p>\n
Two-way wing Ron Harper Jr. is another candidate for promotion.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old has seen less NBA playing time this season than Williams, but he put together an impressive audition Wednesday night, notching 11 points, nine rebounds and three assists against Houston in his first career start. Harper also blanketed Kevin Durant on defense as the shorthanded Celtics, who were playing without Jaylen Brown, Sam Hauser and Simons\/Vucevic, blew out the Rockets 114-93 on the second night of a back-to-back.<\/p>\n
Harper is averaging 25.4 points per game for the G League Maine Celtics this season.<\/p>\n
Boston\u2019s other two-way players are second-round rookie guards Max Shulga, who made his NBA debut late in Wednesday\u2019s win, and John Tonje, who came over from Utah in the Boucher trade. Tonje has yet to see NBA action.<\/p>\n
Now that they are free from apron constraints, the Celtics also can have their pick of veteran players on the buyout market. Clubs above the first apron are barred from signing any waived player whose previous salary was above $14.1 million.<\/p>\n
The list of notable names waived on deadline day includes guards Cam Thomas, Mike Conley and Lonzo Ball. The Celtics could be in the market for backcourt help behind Derrick White and Payton Pritchard, who was moved to the bench to fill Simons\u2019 old spot as a second-unit scorer and ball-handler.<\/p>\n
The list of current or expected buyout players also includes forward Georges Niang, whom Boston acquired last offseason before flipping him to Utah to sign Boucher, and former Milwaukee Bucks All-Star Khris Middleton.<\/p>\n
But after ducking the tax \u2014 the first step toward eventually resetting their heavy repeater penalties \u00a0\u2014\u00a0the Celtics surely won\u2019t want to jump right back into it. For that reason, they might need to get creative with the timing and structure of any veteran pickups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The quest for financial flexibility that defined the Celtics\u2019 offseason continued on NBA trade deadline day. After trading…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3766],"tags":[4329,7,45,75,3798,46,68906,15517,26085,10761,7272,6,2828,1783,3853,4984],"class_list":["post-585356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boston-celtics","tag-anfernee-simons","tag-basketball","tag-boston","tag-boston-celtics","tag-bostonceltics","tag-celtics","tag-celtics-trade-deadline","tag-celtics-trade-rumors","tag-celtics-trades","tag-chris-boucher","tag-josh-minott","tag-nba","tag-nba-trade-deadline","tag-nba-trade-rumors","tag-nikola-vucevic","tag-xavier-tillman"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116021484783272533","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585356","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=585356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}