The Corey's wrote:You know whats crazy talk? Defending going into the taxes because they're too high for these billionaires while not acknowledging that the trades they made do not set them up for future success.
So they lost those cap holds. They'll never be able to dip back into it, they don't have any long term depth and what's worse is the Jays and White take up almost all the cap, making it virtually impossible to improve the team without shipping one of them out the door.
It's not crazy talk at all. The owners didn't want to pay half a billion dollars, with or without Tatum. Great.
How did Brad make the Celtics a championship team for 2026 with these moves?
That's the question you should be answering. Not explaining to me about the second apron like I haven't heard it 2,000 times.
165bows wrote:It’s a worthwhile point if they drop all the way out of the tax it’s hard to go back up.
Then the avenues look like the following - trade Jaylen+ for Jokic/giannis (people might think that’s ridiculous but one or both of those dudes is getting traded soon so best be ready for it), get a high draft pick in 2026 (seem well on their way), and/or just get lucky that the league stinks because no one can spend (ie, just get a still decent Lillard for free and/or some other better unlikely combo).
And while agree the biggest issue in 2025 was health it’s a good point going forward that they are back to 2023 times of just bargain shopping for Brogdon sort of dudes but they are worse off with no Al Horford.
So they are imo still top 5 over the next 3-4 years (next year not withstanding) as our esteemed prehistoric friend says it’s harder to bridge that gap than any other. And between money, age and injury what a massive drop this past few months was.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of this. This was one of my issues with fully ducking the tax originally - re-adding the salary/talent is just harder than is being given credit to.
You're fully tied into a Jays/White core being enough with PP and a few guys you can pick up for MLE/TPE, trades with picks. Which is a downgrade for sure - and hard to get back to contending with. Luckily, the rest of the league is also going to face this problem. If Tatum returns to form, then we still have a better top 3 than most teams. And even though IND is the hot hot right now, I think it was more an aberration that depth won out this year than it is some trend that you don't need a top 5-10 guy and another top 25 one. And, they didn't ultimately win. The team with the MVP did.
It's one of the things I like about the Kuz or similar idea (Vandy, SloMo, etc) - next year salary to trade with in the summer. If you have some pieces you don't mind moving, and then also the TPE you have some real options to add salary back. A good reason to keep Hauser of Niang too (unless you're the difference from the tax line).
We are in decent shape for that with being able to aggregate, owning most of our own 1st round picks, some added 2nds (tho less as of today...). There will be teams next summer in our position this year - needing to dump good players to get under an apron or tax line. Being able to take those players on via TPE or 26-27 expiring deals will help. Esp if we can add picks in as well. But for those things you still have to stay under the apron to do legally. We do have more room in 26-27 to maneuver and still stay under it, though.
injuries and end up with a lottery pick.