Now that William Chisholm has emerged as the Boston Celtics’ buyer, the biggest question facing the franchise’s future is how enthusiastic he’ll be about keeping the team’s roster together in coming seasons as supermax contracts keep pushing the team in the second tax apron.
Current owner Wyc Grousbeck, who joined WEEI’s 'Greg Hill Show' Friday morning, voiced his concerns about the non-monetary punishments the CBA has installed on teams who stay in the second apron – the highest threshold of team spending over the salary cap.
“It’s not the luxury tax bill, it’s the basketball penalties. The new CBA was designed by the league to stop teams from going crazy. They decided that it’s not just good enough to go after the wallets, because then fans are like, ‘Hey, find someone who can afford to spend whatever, $500 million a year,’ or whatever it is. Like the English Premier League, I know several guys that own Premier League teams in England with no spending caps and most of them are wondering what the hell is going on,” Grousbeck told Hill, in response to his question about luxury tax spending.
“Anyway, over here, it’s basketball penalties now, and there’s like, nine of them that kick in if you stay in the second apron,” he continued. “You can’t make trades anymore, it’s very hard. You have to do one player for one, you can’t add up guys to trade a player. You have to get the exact match on salaries, or very close. You freeze your draft picks, you go to the end of the first round. You basically can’t trade them. So all of the sudden, if you finish really poorly, you get the 30th pick because of what we’re spending. You can sign free agents, you don’t get midlevel (trade) exceptions anymore, etc. etc.”
Grousbeck’s characterization of basketball penalties against second apron teams is accurate, and this season, the Celtics are just one of three teams in that tax bracket. They join the Phoenix Suns and Minnesota Timberwolves.
Things really heat up next year, when the first payment comes due on Jayson Tatum’s Supermax contract. The current Celtics roster is projected to cost more than $223 million in total cash and push the team more than $17 million into the second apron.
The Celtics aren’t alone in figuring out their future in the new spending landscape.
“The basketball penalties mean that it’s even more of a premium now to have your basketball general manager, your basketball president be brilliant and lucky. Because you’ve got to navigate, because you can’t stay in the second apron. Nobody will. I predict for the next 40 years, nobody is going to stay in the second apron for more than two years,” Grousbeck said.
So what’s the solution? Grousbeck pointed to 2024 NBA Executive of the Year Brad Stevens, who, in his opinion, “really brought us the championship with his brilliant moves.”
“He’s looking at this. He’s going to extend our window and make it work. I believe he will, and we’ll find out in June and July what he’ll do,” Grousbeck said.