BOSTON — Kristaps Porzingis was asleep when Brad Stevens and the Boston Celtics traded him to the Atlanta Hawks. When he woke up, the opposite was true. Phone tag is never a fun game, and when the call is set to alter the course of a person’s life, it’s even worse.
“By the time he woke up, I was asleep, but he knew he was probably gonna get traded, so I think he was okay by then,” Brad Stevens said on Tuesday.
Jrue Holiday also knew his time wearing Celtics green was in danger of coming to a close. He and Porzingis helped Boston raise Banner 18 just over a year ago, now, both will be donning red threads next season—Porzingis in Atlanta, and Holiday on the Portland Trail Blazers.
“I actually talked to both those guys a couple weeks before, and just said, like, 'Listen, there's a chance that you're back, but there's also a chance that you're not,’” Stevens said.
The Celtics came crashing down this season
If the 2024 season was the peak for Boston, 2025 was the deepest of valleys. They got bounced in the second round of the playoffs by the New York Knicks, blowing a 20-point lead in each of the first two games.
Dreams of repeating as champions were instantly sent into a spiral, and though a hopeful Game 3 performance lifted the organization back up, Game 4 sent them crashing into a pit of despair.
Already on pace to fall into a 3-1 hole, Jayson Tatum went down in a heap late in the fourth quarter. The minutes he spent in a heap on the Madison Square Garden floor felt like hours, and within a few days, he had surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles.
The Celtics lost to the Knicks in six games, but the fallout from the series was worse than any result that the franchise could have imagined.
Losing Tatum for (likely) an entire season was bound to shape the way the Celtics approached the summer, but the biggest trades they made were inevitable, regardless.
“I think that the reality is that we knew going into this year, regardless of how it ended, that we were going to have some really hard decisions to make because of the penalties,” Stevens said.
Tatum’s injury didn’t get Porzingis and Holiday traded; the second apron did.
“The second apron is why those trades happened,” Stevens said. “I think that those were pretty obvious. And the basketball penalties associated with those are real.”
The second apron destroyed the Celtics
Second-apron teams are heavily restricted when it comes to team building. They can’t use the taxpayer MLE, aggregate players in a trade, send out cash in a trade, or add players with a previously-created TPE. Plus, if a team stays in the second apron for three out of any five-year span, their draft pick seven years out automatically moves to the end of the first round.
Boston has been preparing to shed salary for months. The front office knew it, the league knew it, and even the players knew it.
“Those are not easy trades to make,” Stevens said. “Those are not easy phone calls. Obviously, those guys have been around the league a long time. They knew the CBA. They knew that [there] was a high likelihood that they could be part of the move, and they [had been] communicated that before, but it's still hard when you are. But again, we will miss them, and we're thankful for them.”
Still, losing Holiday and Porzingis changes everything for the Celtics, especially when combined with their other losses. Luke Kornet signed a four-year deal with the San Antonio Spurs in free agency, and Al Horford is almost certainly gone, too.
“We made offers to both Luke and Al,” Stevens said. “We would’ve loved to have had both of them back. I'd say that's unlikely. The only reason I haven't talked about Al is [that] it's not final.”
Now, the Celtics have an entirely new roster. Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and Payton Pritchard are still leading the way, but with Tatum sidelined, guys will have to step into new roles.
The Celtics will never be the same
Baylor Scheierman, Sam Hauser, and Jordan Walsh will all have to do more. Rookie Hugo Gonzalez may get more chances than he otherwise might have. Neemias Queta is slated to be the starting center in Boston with Porzingis, Horford, and Porzingis out the door.
The Celtics signed Luka Garza and Josh Minott in free agency, but the players they got back in the Holiday and Porzingis trades should play significant roles, too.
“I think Anfernee is a guy that people out here probably don't see as much because of the time that they play,” Stevens said. “But his ability to score, his ability to shoot the ball, make really hard shots, is pretty elite. And you look at a guy that's 26 years old, [who’s] averaged 20 a game for three straight years. I think he's a really good player, and I think he can get better. And that's a big part of it.”
“And then Niang. Niang has just added value to winning on each team he's been on. And he's a pain to play against, which I very much admire. And he knows what he does well, and he knows how to bring out the best in his group. It's not a coincidence that he was a part of the rotation on those really good Philly teams. He was a part of the rotation this year in Cleveland before the trade. The guy is a winner. Knows how to play, knows how to bring out the best in people. So, happy he's here.”
When the 2024-25 season began, the Celtics were in one of the most unique positions in recent memory. Outside of Oshae Brissett and Svi Mykhailiuk, they brought their entire roster back in hopes of winning a second straight championship.
Scheierman and Anton Watson, who was waived around the trade deadline, were the only two new faces in town before Boston signed Torrey Craig later in the year.
That sort of continuity is something teams can only dream of.
Fast forward to now, and it’s all gone.
Free agency and injuries played their part, but the CBA destroyed the Celtics.
“The agents have done a good job of understanding the challenges of the new CBA and the second apron, and it was really important for us to, again, get us out of that penalty box in a lot of ways, because you can feel those, and those are real things,” Stevens said. “And so, I had conversations with both of them prior, too. So, they're still hard phone calls to make.
“It's harder to think about not seeing Jrue and KP in and around the facility every day. That's the hardest part.”