According to HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto, the Boston Celtics converted two-way guard John Tonje to a 10-day contract on Thursday morning. Tonje recently joined the team as part of the deal that sent Chris Boucher to the Utah Jazz ahead of the Feb. 5 NBA trade deadline.
Utah drafted Tonje in the second round last year, after an impressive first-team All-Big 10 season with Wisconsin. Since joining the Celtics, he has yet to see any NBA opportunity. His only run has come up in Maine with Boston’s G-League affiliate, the Maine Celtics. Through his first two appearances with them, Tonje has averaged 25 points and 5.5 rebounds per game.
Boston also signed Dalano Banton, who played for the team in the first half of the 2023-24 season, to a 10-day deal, according to Scotto. The Celtics traded Banton to the Portland Trail Blazers at the 2024 deadline. He spent the next season in a half there, before the Blazers let his contract expire.
Banton inked a training-camp deal with the Dallas Mavericks prior to this current season, but didn’t make the final roster. He recently played out a 10-day contract with the Los Angeles Clippers, where he played a total of 10 minutes across two games.
The Celtics are actually playing luxury tax gymnastics
While this pair of fringe roster moves may seem insignificant, it’s actually important to the team’s goal of staying below the luxury tax line. After their flurry of deadline day moves, the Celtics were two players short of the 14-man minimum roster size. They were also $842,292 below the luxury tax threshold.
Finding two players who make less than that is difficult, to say the least. The more experience someone has, the more their minimum contract is worth, which almost instantly eliminated any veteran free agents from the pool.
According to league rules, a team is allowed to roster fewer than the minimum for a two-week span, before having to fill the spots. By filling the pair of spots on Thursday with Tonje and Banton on 10-day contracts, they buy themselves more time before permanently filling them.
The longer they wait to payout guaranteed contracts, the less money they actually have to spend on said deals. This means that by waiting, they’ve actually given themselves slightly more spending flexibility.
As the Celtics continue to play the waiting game, be on the look out for a couple more 10-day signings in two weeks.