After big trades, Celtics become harbinger for the destruction of the second apron era

New York Times

5 hours ago

BOSTON — Brad Stevens knew the second apron was coming for the Boston Celtics. Any general manager is aware of the looming threat of the NBA's newest and meanest collective bargaining agreement foil.
Knowing is one thing. Living it is an entirely different beast.
'I think the second apron basketball penalties are real, and I'm not sure I understood how real until they were staring me in the face in the last month,' Stevens said after the first round of Wednesday's NBA Draft. 'So I do think that that can't be overstated.'
He thought he was ready for the pain of the second apron. But combing through his front office's plans in the Auerbach Center, where Jayson Tatum was beginning the long journey of rehabbing his torn Achilles, Stevens finally realized the gravity of the situation everyone in the NBA signed up for.
JT since being drafted:
✅ All-Rookie First Team✅ All-Star Skills Challenge Champ✅ 12x Player of the Week✅ 5x Player of the Month✅ 6x All-Star✅ All-Star MVP✅ All-NBA Third Team✅ 4x All-NBA First Team✅ ECF MVP✅ NBA Champion pic.twitter.com/teEVEQlsIX
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) June 24, 2025
The Celtics' president of basketball operations signed Jrue Holiday to a 4-year extension before the start of their title run just over a year ago, knowing those four extra years probably wouldn't be entirely in green. Everyone knew. It was an open secret that the Celtics would have to eventually get off some of the money they committed to their championship core. But they could've had more time to keep Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis around, whom they offloaded in salary dumps before the draft this week.
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Now his squad has earned the distinction of being the first championship team to be squeezed out of contention by the burden of the second apron. The Celtics are the latest evolution of pioneers in payroll pain, the first of what will be numerous victims of a new regime aimed at making parity inescapable.
The victims aren't just the teams. Holiday signed that extension with Boston to stay in Boston. He knew the risks when he inked it, that he could get traded to, say, the Portland Trail Blazers again. He doesn't have to be happy with it. Nobody, besides the competitors who rise with the tide of your sinking ship, is happy with the reality of the second apron.
'Obviously, anytime you make trades, those are tough conversations,' Stevens said. 'But I try my best to communicate in general what our priorities were that I talked about here.'
It used to be that financial sacrifices of this nature were about backing away from the progressive and repeater taxes, the compounding interest that piled up to even exceed the actual payroll in some extreme cases. Salary dumps were analgesic, an austerity measure to alleviate ownership's wrist soreness every time they wrote another zero on the check heading to the league office.
Then the first apron and hard cap machinations came into play, creating some limitations on cap creativity. The second apron erases all semblance of flexibility, which Stevens wanted back. Not that he had a choice. He had to get it back, as much for his front office to be able to do its job as to satiate the still-sore wallets of the new ownership group led by Bill Chisholm and, for three more years, longtime owner Wyc Grousbeck.
Stevens couldn't stop saying the phrase 'regain our flexibility.' He said he was going to repeat it again and again. The second apron puts your front office in a straitjacket, and there's only one way out. Teams come together for special runs, and then age, attrition and an ever-evolving league knock them out of the spotlight quicker than they can anticipate. The second apron is here to force teams to get ahead of basketball fate, in ways so punitive that there is little choice.
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Getting out of the second apron allows a team to begin the process of 'thawing' its frozen 2032 first-round pick. It will allow that pick to avoid being dropped to the end of the round automatically and open it up for future trade use once the multiyear thawing process is complete.
Teams can start aggregating salaries in trades and use the midlevel exception again if they can get far enough south of the projected $207.8 million second apron line. The tools that keep a roster fresh year over year will be back on the table.
As Stevens put it, whatever it costs to get back to financial freedom is what it costs. It's not really optional. Stevens can't convince a new ownership group to foot a half-a-billion-dollar tax bill for a team missing its best player. He's adamant that Tatum will not have a timeline placed on his return. Whatever time it takes is what it takes.
'The biggest challenge for our team is our First Team All-NBA player is in a boot. That's No. 1, right?' Stevens said. 'So we know that going into next year. And then everything else is second to that as far as how we build, grow and improve as much as we can and over the course of time.'
Stevens reiterated what he said after the somber end to the postseason: The goal is to compete for championships. That doesn't have a time frame attached to it. The moves the Celtics made this week were patently not to compete for the 2026 championship. That's to be expected.
Stevens said after the draft last season that his goal was to keep the franchise competitive over the next 10 years, trying to smooth out the inevitable valleys it will face along the way. Some people said the Celtics had a decade of competitiveness ahead of them. They're saying the same thing about the new champs now. The Oklahoma City Thunder have three truly young stars to build around, allowing them to take on and send off role players over the coming decades to keep Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren safe from the specter of the second apron.
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Boston wasn't in that position and certainly isn't anymore. Brown will be 29 this season, Derrick White turns 31 on July 2, and Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser will turn 28 before the playoffs. The window is still there for a little while, but windows slam shut under the weight of the second apron.
The league will look to see how Boston handles the first true blow of the latest CBA. It will be instructional for the other teams who are heading toward the same fate. Stevens managed to get in the clear without paying a price beyond sacrificing Holiday and Porziņģis. Maybe Anfernee Simons, who arrived from Portland for Holiday, will turn into something, whether it be as a productive starter or a valuable asset.
Either way, change has come for the Celtics, and it will keep coming. The second apron is real, and it's here.
(Photo of Brad Stevens: David Butler II / Imagn Images)