Boston Celtics’ Brad Stevens Facing A Traded-Player Exception Dilemma

If there was one question that Celtics fans, still licking their wounds after the six-game loss in the NBA Finals to the Warriors, wanted posed to team president Brad Stevens when he met with the media via Zoom the other day, it was the one delivered by Jay King of the Athletic: Will the team’s ownership group give the green light to more spending, even as the Celtics are already nearly certain to be a team over the luxury-tax threshold next season?

Stevens’ answer, delivered with uncharacteristic terseness (Stevens is talented at giving extended responses without actually saying anything pithy), had to be encouraging to Celtics backers.

“We’ve got the OK to do whatever we need to do,” Stevens said. Next question.

This is especially pertinent because the Celtics have a handful of traded-player exceptions available this offseason that will allow them to add to the roster while also pressing further into luxury-tax territory. The most significant of those exceptions is the one obtained from the Evan Fournier trade, which allows the Celtics to absorb a salary in a trade of up to $17.1 million. There are two other worthwhile exceptions on hand (the Celtics have eight altogether, but most will go unused) that account for salaries of $6.9 million and $5.9 million, and won’t expire until the winter of 2023, but the Fournier exception is the one that will be used as an example of ownership’s willingness to spend. Or not.

That puts Stevens in a tricky position. Using a trade exception isn’t as simple as plucking talent from a pool of willing players—it is not free agency. A TPE requires another trade, which thus requires the cooperation of a team looking to unload a player. The Fournier exception runs out on July 18, and there is a strong expectation that the Celtics will use it to bring in somebody (anybody!) who can help a bench unit that was exposed for its lack of depth against Golden State. At the same time, using a trade exception can be tricky, because the Celtics will not be willing to send out much in return to opposing teams.

Aaron Nesmith, perhaps, but Stevens still likes his potential. Grant Williams or Payton Pritchard? Unlikely.

Draft picks? Equally unlikely. Stevens has already mortgaged the Celtics’ last two first-rounders, sending out the 2021 pick as part of the deal that brought back Al Horford and the 2022 pick for Derrick White. Both of the deals helped Boston to the Finals, but Stevens is sensitive to the fact that he’s had to sit out the first round of the draft for the past two years. And most of the Celtics’ second-rounders are accounted for—they have two coming in by trade in next year’s draft, but owe their second-rounders in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2027 elsewhere.

Celtics Need To Take Back A Bad Contract

That means that the Celtics, if they want to use their TPEs, have to get something for nothing. They will need to bring in players whose teams do not want them anymore because their contracts are taking up more space than the player is worth. Kevin Huerter of the Hawks might sound like a nice idea, for example, but can cap space and Aaron Nesmith really be enough of an incentive for Atlanta to dump him?

More likely, the Celtics are looking at players like Nerlens Noel or Alec Burks of the Knicks, guys their teams would happily just get off their books. There are possibilities like Kyle Kuzma of the Wizards, maybe, or Terrence Ross of the Magic. T.J. McConnell of the Pacers? Davis Bertans of the Mavs? The Clippers’ Luke Kennard?

They are all, certainly, NBA players and Stevens could probably have any of them with a limited outlay of assets in return. But something else Stevens said in his media session stands out, which amounts to him saying that the Celtics are not going to spend the trade exception just for the sake of spending the trade exception.

“The trade exception, there is a reason why most of the trade exceptions go unused,” Stevens said. “We have one that expires, obviously the big one expires in July. We have a couple that expire later. They’re reasonable amounts that you can take good players in with, so you balance that against, what’s the cost that you’re gonna have to pay, are you gonna bring someone in who is gonna add to and not necessarily take away, which you obviously don’t want to do. So it’s still about being thoughtful and prudent about what the deal is. We’re going through the whole list, we’re trying to find guys that fit what we need.”

Part of that is bringing in players who are not just situational players, the kind of guys who did not get much run under Ime Udoka last season. Noel could help the Celtics off the bench defensively, but he would be an offensive liability. Kennard goes the other way—great shooter but a player teams would target defensively. Stevens could get that kind of player, but to what end? So that Udoka won’t play him while the team goes well into tax territory?

Still, there are expectations. If the Celtics do not use the exception, fans will assume the ownership group cheaped out. But circumstances might dictate that Stevens can’t bring back the kind of player who actually moves the Celtics forward. Or, as he put it, “Just look for things that make sense within your group.”

It may be, in the end, that nothing makes sense for this group with the exception. That’ll be tough to explain to fans, however.