On Friday, a day after the Boston Celtics‘ ownership group agreed to sell the team to Bill Chisholm for $6.1 billion, current owner Wyc Grousbeck addressed the biggest issue that the franchise is facing. In an interview on WEEI, Grousbeck said that he doesn’t think any NBA team will be willing to deal with the stiff penalties that come with maintaining a payroll that crosses the second-apron threshold.
“You can’t stay in the second apron,” Grousbeck said. “Nobody will. I predict for the next 40 years of the CBA no one’s gonna stay in the second apron more than two years.”
Boston is well above the second apron and its roster could cost more than $400 million next year, including luxury-tax payments, even if it doesn’t re-sign soon-to-be free agents Al Horford and Luke Kornet. That cost, however, is not the problem. The problem is the set of team-building restrictions built into the league’s latest collective bargaining agreement.
“It’s not the luxury-tax bill,” Grousbeck, who will remain the Celtics’ CEO and governor until the end of the 2027-28 season, said. “It’s the basketball penalties, OK? The new CBA was designed by the league to stop teams from going crazy. And they decided that it’s not just good enough to go after the wallets because then the 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 seven guys that own Premier League teams in England with no spending caps and most of them are wondering what the hell’s going on. Anyway, over here, it’s basketball penalties now.”
In case you aren’t familiar with the basketball penalties Grousbeck is referring to: If a team is above the second apron at the end of a season, its first-round draft pick seven years into the future will be “frozen,” i.e. ineligible to be traded. If it’s over the second apron in two of the four seasons than follow (three of five overall), then that pick will be moved to the end of the first round regardless of where the team lands in the standings that season. Second-apron teams do not have access to the midlevel exception, cannot aggregate salaries in trades, cannot take back more salary than they send out in trades, cannot send cash in trades and cannot sign-and-trade a player for another player (or use a trade exception generated from a sign-and-trade to trade for another player).
All of those restrictions are in addition to the other restrictions that teams face when they merely exceed the first apron: no acquiring players via sign-and-trade, no access to the bi-annual exception, no access to the buyout market (unless the waived player made less than the non-taxpayer midlevel before being waived), no access to trade exceptions generated the prior season.
Grousbeck said he presumes that concerns about these team-building restrictions led to the Los Angeles Clippers letting Paul George walk last summer. Echoing what he told ESPN’s Shams Charania on Thursday, he told WEEI that “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.”
He then praised Boston’s lead executive: “We have Brad Stevens, the reigning Executive of the Year, and thank God we do. He’s the one that really brought us this championship with his brilliant moves — I mean, many other people, but Brad [was at the] forefront. And he’s looking at this and he’s gonna extend our window and make it work. I believe he will, and we’ll find out in June and July what he decides to do.”
Next season, the Celtics’ Jaylen Brown will make $53.1 million and Jayson Tatum will make a projected $54.1 million. Jrue Holiday ($32.4 million), Kristaps Porzingis ($30.7 million) and Derrick White ($28.1 million) aren’t cheap, either. It’s not clear exactly how Stevens will navigate the coming offseason, but the new CBA is simply not conducive to a group like this staying together for an extended period of time.
Also in the interview: Asked when he anticipates the sale becoming official, Grousbeck guessed July because of the timing of the agreement — the playoffs are mere weeks away, and the league typically doesn’t make big announcements during the playoffs.
