You get out of it one year earlier. Also, Celtics must not have WANTED to give Brown a new max deal. Which would have been a whole distraction starting this season. 

No expects PG to get a new max deal, no drama.

Consider a team that’s about to get rid of their supermax player and knows that it’s going to mean they’re about to be really bad for years, the Bucks with Giannis for example. They don’t want a guy back in that deal who’s going to be making $70M three years from now, they want future developmental assets and draft picks. Neither of those things are helpful in salary-matching to work within the CBA, so you throw in an expiring contract that they know they can either hang onto for a year, or buy out halfway through the season without having to pay 3-years of that salary to do it.

The other piece is that PG knows he’s not getting an extension with us, so him not getting said extension won’t cause any sort of rift in the locker room, that is 100% not the case with Jaylen. I’m still lukewarm on the trade, but when you think of it as us getting 1 year of PG and then having a big contract to pair with all our other assets in order to try and take a big swing next offseason vs. hanging onto Jaylen and either locking ourselves into him and Tatum at 70% of the cap for the foreseeable future or not giving him his extension and pissing him off, it’s definitely defensible.

Let’s say you’re the Thunder in two years, when Shai’s supermax kicks in.

You have Shai, Chet and Jalen on huge deals. Those three basically take you to the first apron. You fill out your starting five with hertenstien and Caruso and before you touch your bench you’re at the 2nd apron.

Now, you can’t stay in the 2nd apron for more than a year or two really.

So you have to trade Chet or Jaylen. But…. You can’t take long term money back, otherwise you’re in the same situation. You have to shed salary. This is the position Boston was recently in.

So… You trade Chet or Jalen for an expiring contract + draft pics/young guys.

The contract expires, you don’t resign, you keep the assets.

That’s the difference between JB and PG.

If you trade for JB, there’s two things 1) he’s expecting an extension and 2) assets aren’t coming with him.

With PG - no expectations for a new contract and assets will come with him.

This shit didn’t matter in the old CBA. This is a brand new reality.

Will it work? Hard to say.

But JB and JT taking up 70% of the cap was highly unlikely to work in this CBA environment.

They want their books clean to be able to build around Tatum when the new CBA locks in.

The opt out is 08/28.

George will be productive this year and be incredibly valuable as an expiring contact either to us, or to another team going into next season. Any team that wants to clear contacts will have interest in his 57 million coming off their books sooner than their current contracts will come off their books.

The question will be return, and whether or not it’s more valuable for us to let him expire, or trade him for longer term contracts.

Regardless, he’s valuable.

Here is the thing regarding JB and PG’s contracts. They’re saying it is one year earlier, but that’s not the comparison. It is two more years of PG versus FIVE more of JB because if you keep him you need to extend and commit to him.

The Celtics didn’t want to commit to him.

If you want to trade for a star you need to match salary. Maybe a team wants to dump its star and rebuild from scratch. Often in that scenario they’d rather acquire a large expiring than a large long term deal.

Expirings are valuable to teams blowing it up. For example, Milwaukee took on Tyler Herro’s \(33M expiring. It is unlikely they re-sign him and let him walk in free agency. They have quite a few guys whose contracts are up this summer (Kuzma, Jaquez, LeVert, KPJ) and only have \)116M on the books with 11 players signed. This will make it extremely easy for them to stay under the cap and bottom out while in the meantime they look for other trades (moving Myles Turner, whatever they’re doing with Gary Trent, AJ Green) and can basically completely clear their team out for 2028-29.

They don’t really have any of their own picks or Miami’s until 2030 and aren’t a free agent destination so they’re going to be bad in the meantime, but that’s the price they paid for going all in on Lillard and then Turner emptying the tank. They can sign short term deals and basically be Sacramento East for the next 4 seasons doing “win now” moves with bad rosters and probably try to rehab journeymen to flip them (like OKC did with Horford, Chris Paul, etc. Then hope when Giannis is 35+ years old and the Heat suck, the Bucks can build through the draft.

This is maybe a bad example of an expiring because the Bucks have no picks, but ideally, you clear the books while bottoming out, draft high and land a really good talent, use the freed up money to sign a good player to pair with them, and then build depth around that while the generational rookie is still making pennies compared to his on court value.

The Celtics went all in before Tatum and Brown’s extensions kicked in. The Thunder went all in before Holmgren and JDub’s extensions kicked in. The Spurs went all in before they have to pay Wemby and Harper. This is the time teams want to sign expensive players, and so clearing cap space is extremely valuable. Long term max money is only valuable to teams who already have their team in place, like Philadelphia did when they traded for Brown.

Most teams are finished products that don’t want a max guy (Thunder, Knicks, Spurs), are still looking to build out depth that can’t afford gutting pieces to pay Brown (Nuggets, Lakers, Wolves, Celtics trying to add), or don’t have any good contracts to match where it moves the needle based on what they’d have to give up (Pistons, Cavs, Blazers, Rockets, Magic) or simply traded for better players (Raptors, Heat). When the Golden State deal fell through, the only team left where Brown could have put them over the top was Philadelphia.

This is also why the Bucks had a hard time rerouting Brown to a 3rd team.

Jaylen Brown is without a doubt a better player than Paul George, and those 2 picks to some don’t cover the gap between them. But this is why an expiring deal is more lucrative to more teams than a player of Jaylen Brown’s caliber making max money. The whole “optionality” thing is a joke to some people, but it legitimately does give the Celtics more options when exploring the market for a trade.

There is an opt-out clause in the current CBA that either side, the Owners or NBAPA, can trigger in 2028. I am quite confident that this it the reason why the C’s were so adamant about having a player on a 2-year deal rather than JB’s 3. Word on the street was the C’s only offered Giannis 2 years, rather than 3, which is a big reason he ended up in Miami. My best guess is Brad is fully expecting the CBA opt-out to be triggered and he wants as much freedom as possible for the following season.

You said it in your own description. It’s 2 years instead of three. But also that’s the bare minimum, If you didn’t offer JB an extension making it five years he was going to throw a hissy fit like he always does. So worst case scenario you got Paul George for 2 years and you don’t have Jaylen Brown for five that would be like a 70 million per year extension (thank God)

I bet good money that the Celtics ceiling is exactly the same with or without Jaylen Brown moving forward. Their ceiling with him (especially cuz he was the reason they lost this year) was the first round exit.

Teams looking to rebuild are looking for an expiring contract and picks

Brown would have been extended or traded in a different deal, he would not have realistically expired.

And expiring contract is valuable because you can either get off-season cap space, trade it for a player on a long term deal, or use it to facilitate a 3 team deal and get assets for helping.

I wouldn’t say it necessarily has value, but it no longer has negative value because no matter how expensive it is, it expires the following summer

Think of it this way, team a has two players making a combined 50 mill and signed for 3 more years, they’re tied to that money long term. The players aren’t worth that money and they’d like to get off it, team b has 1 player making 50 mill and expiring this summer, he also isn’t worth the money- which player or players would you rather have?

You’d take the one guy making 50 mill expiring this summer, because it’s a shorter commitment

Make sense?

I’d say an expiring is valuable for a team looking to either rebuild or reset.

Rebuild is obvious. Team wants to turn the page on the current roster ASAP. Team wants to create more opportunities for young players, and it’s much easier to ask a player passing through for a year to take a smaller role. That sort of thing.

Reset is less common but still worth bringing up. Team has expensive veterans and has young players who are going to need to get paid soon. Team moves vets so they can eventually pay young guys without entering cap hell. For example, I could see this happening with the Spurs and De’Aaron Fox a year from now.

It’s possible that a team is dumb, put themselves in cap hell, and are looking to trade good player(s) with multiple years left for expiring contract(s), but that sort of thing is way less common than it used to be; teams are more cap-savvy now. I’d say the closest recent example is the Bucks stretching-and-waiving Dame to sign Myles Turner, but that was more out of desperation to keep Giannis than pure lack of planning.

This time next year “Brad got the best deal for PG that was out there”

A lot of good responses here about Jaylen’s potential extension, George not wanting one, and teams trading a star player and going into rebuild.

I also wanted to add that another reason it might be beneficial is if a really good young team has big extensions on the horizon and they need to trade a good player on a multi year contract to get off that money earlier.

An example of this might be someone like De’Aaron Fox. I really don’t hope that we end up trading George for Fox, SAS would probably love to get off of that contract

The CBA requires you to exchange salaries like for like, but it does not require the length of the two contracts to be the same. The benefit of an expiring deal is that the salary only goes until the end of that year, then it becomes cap space.

The value of an expiring contract right now is much more limited than it used to be. Teams used to commit awful, awful contracts to players and needed a way to get out of it, especially because opening up 40-50M in cap space meant signing a max player because there would always be 4-5 max-eligible players potentially going into free agency.

Now contracts are less bloated, don’t last as long, and there are fewer high-quality free agents so that cap space has less value than it did in 2010. If you’re already a FA destination like Miami or LA then that space has more value, but Boston is already a less attractive FA spot so freeing up space for us doesn’t help a ton unless we have other young players we want to extend

You can also trade Paul George for players on lesser long term contracts like we did with porzingus and holiday. We become buyers with the expiring contract. The other team is reducing payroll or rebuilding.

Much less than the cope artists on this sub believe

This is Google Gemini’s answer to your exact question:

An expiring contract is an NBA player’s contract that is in its final year. Once the season ends, the player becomes a free agent, and their salary completely disappears from the team’s payroll.
To an NBA general manager (GM), an expiring contract is rarely valued for the player’s performance on the court; instead, it is prized as a financial tool to reset payroll, facilitate trades, and rebuild a roster.

1. Instant Cap Space (Financial Flexibility)

Under the NBA’s salary cap system, teams have a limit on how much total money they can pay their roster.

The Benefit: If a GM trades for a player earning \(30 million on an expiring contract, that \)30 million vanishes from the team’s financial books the moment the season ends.

Why GMs Want It: It grants immediate “cap space” for the upcoming summer. This free money allows the GM to sign new star free agents, absorb other teams’ players, or avoid heavy league tax penalties (the Luxury Tax and strict spending aprons).

2. Salary Matching in Trades
The NBA requires over-the-cap teams to match incoming and outgoing salaries when trading players (you cannot simply swap a \(5 million player for a \)30 million player).

The Scenario: Suppose Team A has an All-Star earning $30 million on a long-term deal, but the team wants to rebuild and get rid of his long-term money.

The Solution: Team B can trade an expiring contract worth $30 million to Team A in exchange for the All-Star. The trade satisfies the NBA’s salary-matching rules. Team A gets out of paying that All-Star for the next 3–4 years because the contract they took back expires in a few months.

3. Contract Length vs. Financial Commitment
A contract’s value to a GM depends as much on its length as its dollar amount. Long-term contracts lock up a team’s financial flexibility for years.

Short-Term Risk: An expiring contract carries zero long-term financial risk. If the player plays poorly or gets injured, the GM suffers no long-term consequences because the deal ends in June.

Trade Bait for Rebuilding Teams: Bad or non-contending teams often “rent out” their expiring contracts to contending teams. In exchange for helping a contender clear immediate salary cap space, the rebuilding GM will demand sweetening assets—such as future draft picks or young prospects.

An expiring contract acts as financial eraser fluid for an NBA franchise. It allows a GM to trade away unwanted long-term financial commitments, adhere to salary-matching trade rules, and reset their salary cap to pursue new talent.

Another angle is the Player Option on PG’s 2nd year. As much as it is highly likely he picks it up, as the term suggests – option. It adds another option.

It’s wishful thinking hoping he would decline and re-sign for added years but with less $, but at least that option is doable, if ever.

Also, if JB wasn’t traded and he wasn’t given that 2-yr extension last month, I’m certain media would still pounce on that angle and would also trigger the fans’ emotions and we would be discussing it here as well, and it would be the running narrative all throughout the season.

But besides the contract, the biggest difference is PG at this stage would be perfectly fine being a star role player, and that would greatly benefit the supporting cast most especially.

Basically you can start game planning for the future sooner bc that money is tied up for less time. Also with PG, he’s not adding much value to the team so you could use him as a trade piece for a star on a team that is also trying to rebuild.

In this scenario it’s multi-faceted:
- Avoidance of JB’s extension this summer
- Flexibility to restructure or trade away PG on year 2 - could certainly be stretched out on a team-friendly deal and retire as a Celtic. JB still has many seasons in the tank.
- Tatum’s extension is up next summer, and everybody knows he’s getting every last cent possible

There is zero reality where kicking JB’s extension down the road another season wasn’t going to lead to a media circus and JB trying to prove himself this year (which wouldn’t be a good thing).

Brad doesn’t like distractions and knew we were going to flounder with this duo and their cap consumption. JB’s value would have certainly eroded throughout this year just from the signal alone that Boston sent the signal that they weren’t confident in him long term, no matter how well he played.

It sells hope which sells tickets

The talk about the expiring contract is pure cope. They were a championship contender before the trade but they are not now.

Its not clear why George’s is better than Browns except it happens a year earlier

It was just a bad trade. No need to further analyze

Brad said optionality

I’m striking out finding a recent example of an expiring yielding anything of value, anything less than a Brown adjacent player or worse if PG gets extended we need to clear house top down, Chisholm and all