Kristaps Porzingis was the finishing touch on the Boston Celtics winning a championship. Now he is a painful casualty of a team slashing salary to get under the second tax apron.
The Boston Celtics did not waste time this offseason. They had what appears to be a singular goal in mind: reduce their record-breaking salary by tens of millions of dollars, in the process getting out of the punitive second tax apron.
That wasn't the only course available to them after Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles against the New York Knicks in the second round of the NBA Playoffs, but it was always the most likely one. Paying over $500 million for an NBA team is approaching lunacy; doing it for a team whose best player is unlikely to suit up for a single game all season would be a criminal offense.
Even so, there were different paths to take. They could stair-step down in salary, picking up helpful players and slowly reducing the number. They could have paid through the nose for the Brooklyn Nets -- the only team with appreciable cap space -- to take the entirey of Jrue Holiday's contract.
Instead, Brad Stevens and company acted quickly and mercilessly to turn Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis into lesser, less expensive players -- and reducing their tax bill by $210 million in the process. They traded Holiday to the Portland Trail Blazers on Monday evening for guard Anfernee Simons and a pair of second-round picks.
The second step -- and perhaps the final one -- came on Tuesday, with Kristaps Porzingis being traded to the Atlanta Hawks. The Hawks are likely looking at the wide open field in the Eastern Conference and believing that with the right addition, they could be a homecourt advantage team in the playoffs. They might be right.
The Celtics certainly are not operating as if they want to be, as they essentially salary-dumped Porzingis to Atlanta. The Hawks paid the Brooklyn Nets a first-round pick to take on the contract of Terance Mann, while backup forward Georges Niang is the only player -- and salary -- heading back to the Boston Celtics.
Here is the trade in full:
Niang, a Boston native, makes just $8.2 million this season, significantly less than the $30.7 million that Porzingis makes. That $22.5 million difference drops the Celtics all the way out of the second apron, opening up a variety of team-building tools, saving the new owners countless millions and allowing the Celtics the flexibility to change the roster in the coming months.
The cost, however, was substantial. Two starters from a team that won the championship just 12 months ago -- and who won 61 games just this year -- were dumped for a pair of seconds, a bench gunner and a one-way shooting guard who doesn't fit at all what has made the Celtics special. Simons will very likely be routed to another team, if not this offseason, by the Trade Deadline.
Kristaps Porzingis has battled injuries and illness, but when he is on the court he is a dominant two-way player even at this point in his career. The Hawks are significantly better today than they were yesterday. And the Celtics may be justified in making the move because of the financial savings involved, but it's still a painful salary dump of an All-Star level center who perfectly fits their system.
The chopping may be done; perhaps healing can begin. The Celtics may reload a year from now and all is forgotten. For now, however, the Celtics have taken a great team and sold it off for parts. That's a difficult pill for Boston fans to swallow.