Last summer, following the Boston Celtics` championship parade, the celebrations subsided, and attention turned to the franchise`s future business.
Just ten days after hoisting the trophy, on July 1, team governor Wyc Grousbeck made a startling announcement: his family intended to sell the controlling stake in the franchise.
Despite this looming ownership change, the Celtics, featuring a roster loaded with players in their prime, opted for continuity. They kept their championship core intact and aimed for a repeat title and a 19th banner.
The team enjoyed a successful regular season, winning 61 games, and easily advanced through the first round of the playoffs in five games. The plan remained to compete for the championship for the next six weeks and then address the business aspects after potentially another parade.
However, the Celtics now face an unexpectedly critical Game 3 on Saturday afternoon at Madison Square Garden, finding themselves surprisingly trailing 2-0 in their conference semifinal series against the New York Knicks.
If the Celtics cannot turn their performance around in this series – particularly reversing their poor shooting slump, which has seen them miss a staggering 75 three-pointers over the first two games while squandering back-to-back 20-point second-half leads – their continued viability as a cohesive unit will suddenly come under scrutiny.
Regardless of how this season concludes, this championship-winning Celtics group faced an uncertain future primarily due to the enormous costs associated with keeping the roster, masterfully assembled by team president Brad Stevens, together.
The Celtics are currently being sold to an investment group led by Bill Chisholm at a valuation exceeding $6 billion. This record-breaking transaction generated optimism among NBA power brokers and reinforced confidence in the league`s financial health.
Chisholm, a lifelong Celtics enthusiast and Massachusetts native, has reportedly been forming a coalition to secure the financing for this monumental purchase.
Once the sale is finalized, it`s clear that the Celtics, last sold for a mere $360 million over two decades ago, will face a significantly larger financial burden to service.
The Celtics recognized that their present and future success depended heavily on their two-way wing stars, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Securing these two players with long-term contracts was a key part of their strategy and was successfully executed. Brown signed his extension in 2023, followed by Tatum in 2024, locking them in with the Celtics until the end of the decade for a combined total exceeding $600 million.
Looking back at least three years, as the new collective bargaining agreement between NBA owners and the players` association was being shaped, the Celtics identified the year 2025 as a significant financial challenge point.
We are now just weeks away from that critical juncture, irrespective of the playoff outcome, because Tatum`s new contract takes effect. Consequently, the Celtics will face the status of being a `repeater` luxury tax payer.
Among the current Celtics core, only veteran big man Al Horford is a pending free agent in the final year of his contract. Sources indicate he does not plan to retire and wishes to return. All other key players – including guards Derrick White and Jrue Holiday, both of whom signed extensions in 2024, along with center Kristaps Porzingis and Sixth Man of the Year Payton Pritchard – are under contract into the future.
Under normal circumstances, maintaining such a core group would be lauded as astute management. When you have a high-performing team, the priority is typically to keep it together. Stevens and his front office have achieved this goal.
However, the modern NBA landscape presents financial complexities that even expert roster construction struggles to fully overcome.
This is where the colossal number comes into play. The projected payroll, including luxury taxes, for the Celtics next season is staggering and potentially historic, estimated at $464 million by ESPN front office insider Bobby Marks, even if Horford does not re-sign.
If the Celtics manage to retain their first-round draft pick – which they desperately need for the cost-effective contract it provides – and fill out the remaining roster spots with minimum-salary players, the team`s total payroll could cross the $500 million threshold.
Last season, the Celtics set a franchise revenue record, driven by their championship run and hosting four rounds of playoff games. Losing Game 4 in Dallas last year, despite holding a 3-0 series lead, inadvertently boosted revenue by allowing the Celtics to clinch the title in front of their home fans in a highly lucrative Finals game. This helped push the franchise`s revenue to around $450 million, according to a Sportico report.
One doesn`t need a graduate degree from a top business school to grasp the looming mathematical challenge this presents.
This developing financial storm has largely been kept separate from the team`s focus during the current season. Multiple sources indicate that the team has avoided conversations with player agents about potential future spending adjustments, a deliberate strategy to keep the players focused solely on performance on the court.
The families of the Celtics players are known to be very close, a bond fostered through multiple deep playoff runs and roster stability since the end of the COVID-19 disruptions.
Stevens and his staff have successfully shielded the players from concerns about the ownership transition and financial uncertainty as they pursue another championship banner, according to individuals close to the team.
Earlier this season, NBA teams received welcome news when the league significantly increased its debt limit from $275 million to $425 million per team, a benefit tied to the new 11-year, $77 billion media rights deals set to begin next fall.
This increase provides every team, including the Celtics, with a potential financial buffer to absorb losses if they choose to utilize it.
In February, Fitch Ratings upgraded the NBA`s credit rating from `A-minus` to `A,` suggesting that league owners are financially secure.
However, if the Celtics fail to advance past this second-round series against the Knicks – and thus fail to defend their title, mirroring the fate of the past five NBA champions – the extent of the fallout is uncertain. It doesn`t require expensive consultants to advise against spending $500 million on a roster that didn`t even reach the conference finals.
While these financial implications should not, and likely will not, be occupying the minds of the Celtics players on the court, the league-wide chatter about the existential financial threat facing this team will undoubtedly intensify with each loss. This represents a far more significant consequence than the typical noise about players` and coaches` reputations or legacies that often fills the NBA ecosystem each spring.
