The NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement with its so-called “second apron” rules is hitting the Boston Celtics first and hardest. After just trading for the pair two years ago in a series of moves that ended up bringing the Celtics their record 18th NBA championship, president of basketball operations Brad Stevens was forced to trade away guard Jrue Holiday and center Kristaps Porzingis, simply to keep the team under the second apron.
The second apron and its less-severe sibling known, appropriately, as the first apron, are spending limits that come with severe penalties when a team pushes its payroll past them. The penalties go well beyond the exorbitant competitive balance, or “luxury” taxes that teams must shell out.
Violating the aprons, the second one especially, comes with team-development restrictions that can cripple the ability of a franchise to remain competitive for more than a couple of years every decade or two.
That’s why Stevens traded Holiday to the Portland Trail Blazers and Porzingis to the Atlanta Hawks just two years after acquiring them.
New Trade Proposal Gets Boston Under Second Apron
“The second apron’s why those trades happened,” Stevens said last week, as quoted by Yahoo! Sports. “I think that those are pretty obvious. The basketball penalties associated with those are real.”
A new trade proposal posted to the site FanSpo, which automatically calculates the financial feasibility and results of hypothetical trades drawn up by site users, would keep the Celtics under the second apron â though still above the first â by trading a player who hasn’t even suited up for the Celtics in exchange for a big man to take the role Porzingis played, and a power forward on an expiring contract who could bridge the gap until the return on injured four-time All-NBA first-teamer Jayson Tatum.
Tatum suffered a torn achilles tendon during Game Four of the Celtics second-round playoff series against the New York Knicks in May, and is expected to miss all or at least most of next season.
Here’s how the proposed trade between the Celtics and their 2024 NBA Finals opponents the Dallas Mavericks lines up:
Mavericks receive:
Shooting guard Anfernee Simons.
Small forward Jordan Walsh.
Celtics Receive:
Center Daniel Gafford.
Power Forward P.J. Washington.
Simons, 26, is due to earn $27.7 million in the upcoming season, and is also on an expiring deal. The Celtics acquired him in the trade that sent Holiday to the Portland Trail Blazers â the team that drafted Simons in 2018, in the first round out of IMG Academy in Florida.
Rim Protector Comes to Boston in Proposed Deal
If he were to be traded before the season starts, Simons would not have played a single game as a Boston Celtic. Walsh, on the other hand, has bounced between the G-League and Boston since being taken in the 2023 second round. He has played in 61 games for the Celtics, but averages just 1.6 points.
Gafford would be the prize for Boston in the proposed trade. The 6-foot-10, 234-pounder would provide the rim protection at 1.8 blocks per game, per his 2024-2025 stats, the Celtics lose by trading away Porzingis.
The Celtics also lost backup center Luke Kornet to free agency, with 29-year-old big man off the bench Al Horford expected to leave as well, probably to sign with the Golden State Warriors, according to NBA conventional wisdom â making the acquisition of a player like Gafford a must.
The trade would shave $1.3 million off the Celtics payroll, leaving them as a first-apron team, according to FanSpo.
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Celtics Trade Pitch Replaces Porzingis By Flipping $27.7 Million Shooter appeared first on Heavy Sports.