When the Celtics traded Kristaps Porzingis last summer, it seemed like a pretty straightforward salary dump. They got off the last year of his two-year, $60 million deal, bringing back just Georges Niang, whom they flipped again almost immediately. The move was one giant step in their quest to dip under the dreaded second apron, and eventually, the luxury tax; a mission that Brad Stevens and his team eventually accomplished.
While I’m certainly not denying that the salary cap and luxury tax implications were a huge part of the move, this also clearly had a lot to do with KP. As much as he thrived in Boston, he struggled to stay on the court and was barely even a part of the team’s 2024 title run.
Things got worse in the following season, and he battled a mysterious illness that rendered him essentially useless in the 2025 playoffs against the Magic and Knicks, to the point that he was badly outplayed by Luke Kornet.
At that point, the Celtics had to make a tough decision: keep Porzingis, a part-time player with mysterious ailments, and pay a preposterous amount of luxury taxes while restricting the team’s ability to make moves, or cut bait and redistribute the salary and assets to build a more reliable team.
And the more time that passes, the more it seems like the Celtics made the right choice. KP battled the same illness and other injuries last season in Atlanta, appearing in just 17 games before he was traded again to the Warriors for Jonathan Kuminga.
Porzingis is no longer a reliable NBA player
The KP experiment never really got off the ground in Golden State either, as he played in just 15 more games after the trade. The Warriors bought into the idea and re-signed him for two years and $40 million to be the stretch-five in a Stephen Curry-Steve Kerr offense.
But on Monday, Mike Dunleavy announced that Porzingis, after being cleared for on-court activities last week, will now be out indefinitely with an unspecified health issue. It’s a tough blow for the Warriors and another bad piece of news for KP, but this is a big reason why the Celtics got rid of him.
Sadly, he’s simply not a reliable NBA player at this point in his career. The injuries and illnesses are adding up, and it seems that his body is failing him. He’s 31 years old now, and he has reached 60 games played only once since 2017. The NBA is a business, and unfortunately, that means some cold-blooded decisions have to be made.
That’s what happened with the Celtics and Porzingis. The money certainly played a big role, but at the end of the day, it was about the value of the player, and Porzingis simply isn’t coming close to living up to the value of his contract, nor has he been for a while, and there’s not much reason to hope things will change any time soon.
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