Boston Celtics: 3 ways to get Bradley Beal to Beantown
Wait and sign Bradley Beal via free agency down the road
As you may have heard, with the recent roster moves new President of Basketball Operations, Brad Stevens, has made, the Boston Celtics have the opportunity for a max slot in the 2022-23 offseason.
This would obviously be the ideal scenario, no?
Retaining both Brown and Tatum, while signing Bradley Beal to a max contract and creating a Big-3 without losing the core; sounds great, except for one thing… to get that max slot, they would have to lose everyone.
The ability to have a max slot and naturally having one are two different things.
The Boston Celtics have the former.
It would take a lot of letting-go, and a lot of contracts would need to be shifted around to actually open up the space to obtain Bradley Beal.
Boston does not currently have the Bird rights to the star, which means they have to be his projected salary amount below the salary cap.
His projected salary will be roughly $42 million, and the salary cap for the 2022-23 season is $115 million. This would mean the Celtics would have to be sitting at roughly $73 million on the books to sign Beal to a maximum contract.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown alone are projected to make $58 million in the 2022-23 season, meaning Boston could only have $15 million allotted to players outside of their two cornerstones.
To even create this space, the front office would have to:
- Waive and stretch Al Horford, creating a much lower cap hit than his guaranteed $14.5M
- Choose between not re-signing Evan Fournier this offseason or not extending Marcus Smart next offseason
- Not extending Robert Williams
- Declining 2-3 of the 4 team options of Payton Pritchard, Aaron Nesmith, Romeo Langford, and Grant Williams
This is obviously a daunting task, and the Boston Celtics would practically lose the entire team in the process. So for all fans that are saying “let’s just wait to sign Beal so we can have our own superteam”, you might want to re-think that statement.