According to NBA Insider Marc Stein, the Boston Celtics have been looking into trade options for Anfernee Simons, who joined the team last month as part of the Jrue Holiday trade.
“League sources say Boston continues to explore its trade options with newly acquired Anfernee Simons, who became a Celtic as part of the trade that sent Jrue Holiday to Portland,” Stein wrote in a recent Steinline newsletter.
This is nothing new, as Simons’ name has been popping up in trade rumors pretty much the entire month he’s been a Celtic. The team’s consistency in pursuing trades for the 26-year-old sends real signals that he may not be around by the time training camp starts in late September.
Celtics trading Anfernee Simons seems inevitable
Though Simon’s game comes with some exciting aspects, moving on from him might be the right move ahead of a season that already feels like a sunk cost.
If the Cs were entering the 2025-26 campaign at full strength, keeping Simons would make more sense. He’d provide more offensive firepower on a team that’d automatically be in the mix with both Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown in the rotation. Unfortunately, in this reality, Tatum will likely miss the entire season as he recovers from a ruptured Achilles. It’s probably smartest for the team to punt on the seventh-year guard and save some money.
Simons, now 26, is entering the final year of a four-year $100 million contract and will earn $27.7 million next season.
If Boston were able to trade Simons without taking much salary back, it could do wonders for their finances. As of today, July 22, the Celtics are a second-apron team by about $332k. Avoiding that threshold has been a top priority all summer.
"We've known for a long time that hard decisions were coming," Celtics President of Basketball Operations Stevens said earlier this month on the decisions to trade both Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis. "The second apron is why those trades happened. I think that is pretty obvious. And the basketball penalties associated with those are real. ... So that was part of making the decision to push and put our chips on the table and go for the last two years."
A Simons trade where the Cs take back less than $7.4 million in salary would not only clear them of the second-apron, but also the first, and the luxury tax. Resetting tax penalties could encourage the new ownership group led by Bill Chisholm to be more willing to spend down the line once Tatum is healthy, though Chisholm has been vocal about wanting to put a winning team on the floor.