All good I know, I was just making a joke

Yeah we definitely don’t need him, we’ve got enough developing wings already tbh

With that being said, I wish we could offload bad contracts like Sam Hauser’s so we could avoid the repeater tax and actually bring in pieces to help this team instead of depending on Tatum and occasional Pritchard and Paul George shot creation. There’s ways we can improve this team instead of relying on 1 dimensional players and hoping semi young (we’re hoping for 2 26 year olds) to take leaps. After this past year I’m not giving this front office grace to do anything in the future outside of penny pinching

Better than Dillon Mitchell who contemplated going back to college. I think Baylor takes a leap this year but Cam has been more productive than him and Jordan Walsh early on. I’m high on RHJ but he’s been more productive than him so far in his career. Cam has flaws with passing and effort on defense at times but I still feel like he can be a productive NBA player

ya true literally his last game as a Celtic. id think joker has more of a say in his fate but not by much it’s a business. what’s wrong w black horses btw

Well the funny thing about the Celtics is they can offer him a large contract and stay under the 2nd apron.

By including Pritchard in the deal, you skip having to give him a sizable extension as part of this long-term planning the Celtics have to do to navigate the aprons. That will be Golden State’s problem.

So let’s say Paul George and Pritchard out, Curry in at this year’s deadline. The Celtics are \(1.7M below the tax line and this trade would only add \)692K, giving them $1M of room below the tax. That still gives you a 9 man playoff rotation of Tatum, Curry, White, Hauser, Robinson, Queta, Gonzalez, Scheierman, Walsh with 9-12 “break glass in case of emergency” guys as Garza, Conley and Harper.

For 2026-27, 10 players are under contract, where Garza and Conley become free agents. These 10 guys add up to \(154,792,230. The 2027-28 2nd apron is projected to be \)233,879,000. This means we have \(79,086,770 of room below the 2nd apron to fill 4 roster spots. 1 of those will be Curry, 1 probably should be a backup PG with the tax paying mid-level exception around \)6.4M, which leaves roughly \(72.6M of space for the remaining 3. If you sign minimum contracts in that 3-6M range to replace Garza and Conley, you’re left over with about \)60-66M before you hit the 2nd apron. Curry could be re-signed for just under that and we’ll be good, hard capped before the 2nd apron anyway with that MLE signing. Offering him $50-55M makes it easy to duck the 2nd apron, but we might be able to offer slightly more.

MLE’s can be 2 year deals and if Curry is re-signed for 3 years, you can probably come up with an exact dollar amount where we sit under the 2nd apron again for 2028-29, I’m too lazy to figure this out right now. Every player under contract in 2027-28 is also signed through 2028-29 with the exception of a Baylor Scheierman extension. We can essentially run the 2028 playoff team back for 2029 if we wanted to, but trades for equal dollar amounts can always be found.

By 2029-30, we’ll need to pivot, as White, Robinson, Hauser, and the MLE signing would be free agents, and Hugo will be an RFA. There would almost certainly be big moves before then to get out from White, Robinson and Hauser before they lose all value or walk for nothing, but with the 2nd apron restrictions from the 2023-24 and 2024-25 window being lifted, we are kind of allowed to go all in and spend whatever for 2028-29 and 2029-30 without too much penalty.

This is maybe not thinking about the long term beyond that window, but by the end of the 2030 playoffs Tatum will be 32, Curry will be 42, White will be 36, Robinson and Hauser will be 32, and Queta will be 31. We will be old as dirt and unless we somehow get a young star in all this that can become a top 10 player, this will be the end of a contention window and it will be time to trade Tatum for whatever we can get. The 2nd apron won’t be an issue if we’re blowing it up and navigating a completely new CBA in 2030.

If we trade at the deadline for Curry, we can basically offer him what he’s already making and be totally fine regarding the cap sheet.

I don’t believe the issue was ever Jaylen Brown’s current contract, it was that Jaylen Brown’s extension was a tad too expensive if you’re keeping him until 2031 and he’s not that caliber of player to be making that kind of money. He was expensive now, but they kind of already proved they could put together a pretty good team if they never traded him. It just wasn’t enough. You could argue Curry at his age is going to decline and he won’t be that caliber of player either, but his shooting shouldn’t regress that hard and so he will always have gravity, which will be extremely important to opening up the floor for Tatum and our bigs. Look at how many layups Golden State gets, especially guys who aren’t that talented like Podz. That could be Hugo or Walsh for us.

If you can develop 1 of the wings into a starting caliber player (let’s say Hugo becomes about as good as Josh Hart), and White doesn’t regress overnight, then a lineup of Curry, White, Gonzalez, Tatum, Queta with Robinson as the 6th guy is enough to contend. You don’t need much from 7-8 in the playoffs other than be reliable to play about 14-18 minutes and hit a couple of shots a game, and between Scheierman, Walsh, Harper, and whoever the backup guard is I think we can find that.