Brad Stevens has known for quite some time that big changes were coming for the Boston roster, not because of a need to rebuild the team, but because of budget and tax purposes. Luring players like Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis ended up costing them a financial risk, which they’ve solved by trading them out. 

Just a year ago, they were celebrated as the new NBA champions, and just like that, they’ve had to release some of their biggest stars. Combined with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s salary, the Celtics had to find the way to avoid the second apron of their cap salary.

“We’ve known for a long time that hard decisions were coming,” Stevens explained the decisions behind trading both Holiday and Porzingis, which finally became official this week. “The second apron is why those trades happened. I think that is pretty obvious.”

The Boston executive then added then shared the importance of avoiding sanctions. “And the basketball penalties associated with those are real,” he assured. “So that was part of making the decision to push and put our chips on the table and go for the last two years.”

As the Celtic’s president of basketball operations, Brad is well aware that the team must find another approach on the court while Tatum recovers from his Achilles injury. “My expectations are always the same — compete like hell to win the next game,” the executive demanded.

Stevens was emphatic when asking the press to stop using the term “rebuild” for this upcoming 2025-26 campaign, as he doesn’t view it this way. “That’s not going to be part of the lexicon in our building, and that’s the way we’re going to focus moving forward,” he insisted.

According to the Celtics president, this hasn’t been the mandate given by new team owner Bill Chisholm: “Bill has been pretty clear from the get-go that he wants to make sure that we’re prioritizing basketball assets and the ability to retool this thing at the highest level that we can.”

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