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It seems they were always planning to take aggressive cost-cutting measures, but Tatum’s injury made that path easier to justify. Suppose they still lose to the Knicks in six games, but Tatum never tears his achilles: how would they balance staying competitive while cutting payroll? Would they still be fielding a contender?

Honestly, I'm not a Celtics fan but it's kind of sad seeing what's become of their roster. They were such a fun team to watch and root against.

I still see Jrue for Simons. Thats just a massive cost cutting savings for a player on the downswing of his career and saving about 10 mil immediately off the cap resulting in like 30mil in savings from luxury repeater penalties, not to mention the crapton of savings long term, then rehab Simons value or use as part of trade package. Zinger i can see them keeping him for one more season to make another strong run. The rest of the roster, theyll make tweaks likely using draft capital to get better/cheaper talent in the short term, maximize chance of a chip while being fiscally responsible.

running it back, but cost cutting moves involving Jrue. Horford is still there, kinda 50/50 on whether Porzingis is still there but they would have at least found a replacement C. Maybe they get in on Jonas?

I think they would have still traded Jrue to make sure they could be under the tax for 26/27.
I think they would have kept Porzingis and brought Al back.
Would be a really big tax bill, but would be a contender.
I think once Tatum was lost, it became about having the flexibility to have a good team around Tatum in 26/27 and cut as much as possible for this year while keeping the core of Brown, Tatum, White, Pritchard.

They were set up with an unsustainable payroll so some cost-cutting was guaranteed. I think they do at least one of the Holiday or Porzingis moves, probably both. They resign Horford though. Probably use MLE money on another rotation guy if they do both cost-cutting moves.

Looking for a cheap, serviceable C.

Do they pay San Antonio’s price on Kornet and then play him more minutes? I assume he’d prefer to stay if the money was the same, but maybe not.

Assuming they still lost the only difference I see would be Horford being resign and trades around the margin . If they have went further one of Jrue or KP could have been kept.

brackdan70 wrote:I think they would have still traded Jrue to make sure they could be under the tax for 26/27.
I think they would have kept Porzingis and brought Al back.
Would be a really big tax bill, but would be a contender.
I think once Tatum was lost, it became about having the flexibility to have a good team around Tatum in 26/27 and cut as much as possible for this year while keeping the core of Brown, Tatum, White, Pritchard.

I would have thought a bit of a flip. Still do the KP trade, but retain Kornet and Horford. I understand the longer-term cap implications, but Holiday has been really important so losing him, even for Simons who is an efficient weapon on offense, would be problematic.

nykballa2k4 wrote:

brackdan70 wrote:I think they would have still traded Jrue to make sure they could be under the tax for 26/27.
I think they would have kept Porzingis and brought Al back.
Would be a really big tax bill, but would be a contender.
I think once Tatum was lost, it became about having the flexibility to have a good team around Tatum in 26/27 and cut as much as possible for this year while keeping the core of Brown, Tatum, White, Pritchard.

I would have thought a bit of a flip. Still do the KP trade, but retain Kornet and Horford. I understand the longer-term cap implications, but Holiday has been really important so losing him, even for Simons who is an efficient weapon on offense, would be problematic.

Yeah that’s possible for sure.
KP trade saved more money for this year.
I also wonder if they would have looked at slightly different types of trades as well. Maybe bringing back a better player, or in the case of KP trade maybe they keep Mann and the 18th pick and try to move Niang with a second.
Who knows.

If Tatum was healthy their problem wouldn’t be overall talent level, it’d be positional imbalance. They’re too guard and wing heavy. Granted, I think Horford would come back to BOS for minimum vs moving his family to the west coast which helps some. But even so, having your “core” be Tatum/Brown/White and then your next 4 players being guys who essentially back them up in Pritchard/Hauser/Simons/Niang is poor balance. If you had Horford back in the mix, those guys and him aren’t bad at all as the 4th-8th guys in your rotation. It’s just imbalanced.

So if Tatum were healthy I’d expect them to be attaching picks to some of those guys for balance. But with Tatum out, it’s not worth adding picks. Especially since the big man market is pretty thing so you’d have to overpay and this year is essentially a waste. Save them for next year that way you can get full benefit of the player right away with Tatum back. And the roster imbalance for this year probably leads to a worse record and thus a better 2026 pick and thus a better trade piece to use next year. So it’s just not in their best interests right now to make a balancing trade.

I don't think KP would have been kept, only different would have been getting TimeLord back for Minivan, and retaining Horford and Kornett.
Simmons would have been shopped more aggressively to duck the 2nd Apron.