Celtics Flout NBA’s Second Apron With $135 Million Jrue Holiday Extension

The Boston Celtics already projected to boast one of the NBA’s most expensive rosters for the next few seasons. They doubled down on that Wednesday by signing Jrue Holiday to a four-year, $135 million extension, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

The exact year-by-year numbers of Holiday’s new deal aren’t out yet, but Spotrac currently projects the Celtics to have more than $192 million in salary on their books next season. Based on the $141 million projection for the 2024-25 salary cap, the second apron will be roughly $189.5 million next season. The Celtics already project to be well over that, which will limit the ways that they can round out their roster.

The Celtics don’t seem to care. Considering what they’ve done this season, that’s a defensible stance, too.

Heading into the final few days of the regular season, the Celtics are the only 60-win team in the NBA. They have long clinched home-court advantage throughout the Finals if they advance that far. The C’s boast the league’s best offense and second-best defense, and their plus-11.7 net rating is nearly that of double the next-closest team (the Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves at 6.6).

FanDuel Sportsbook currently has the Celtics as the clear championship favorite at +165, with the Denver Nuggets (+300), Los Angeles Clippers (+900), Thunder (+1600) and Milwaukee Bucks (+1700) rounding out the top five. The Celtics are now –175 favorites to win the Eastern Conference in the wake of the calf injury that Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo suffered Tuesday night.

In other words, that’s a core worth maintaining for the next few years. After signing Holiday to this extension, the Celtics might not have another choice thanks to the second apron.

Teams that go over the second apron face an array of roster-building restrictions, including a prohibition on aggregating contracts in trades, taking back more salary than they send out in a trade and trading a first-round pick that’s seven years in the future. Second-apron teams don’t have access to a mid-level exception in free agency, and teams that stay over the second apron for multiple consecutive years have their future first-round picks pushed to the bottom of the round.

Altogether, those new rules make it difficult for teams to build around three max players from the ground up. The Phoenix Suns tried their damnedest this past offseason, but they had to go bargain hunting for their supporting cast because they could only hand out minimum-salary contracts. The Clippers could find themselves in a similar boat this offseason if they re-sign Paul George and James Harden in free agency.

That might be a tough sell for the Suns and Clippers if they fail to make it past the first round of the playoffs, but playoff success has not eluded the Celtics in recent years. Though they have yet to win a championship since 2008, they’ve been in the Eastern Conference Finals five of the past seven years, and they made it to the NBA Finals in 2022. Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum are 27 and 26 years old, respectively, which suggests that level of success should be the standard moving forward, too.

The Celtics seemingly approached the trade deadline with the second apron in mind. They traded two second-round picks to the Memphis Grizzlies for center Xavier Tillman and another second-round pick to the Philadelphia 76ers for guard Jaden Springer. They wouldn’t have been able to swing either move had they waited until the offseason.

Tillman is set to become an unrestricted free agent this offseason, although the Celtics acquired his Bird rights in the trade. That allows them to offer him more than a minimum-salary contract even though they’re well over the salary cap.

The Celtics couldn’t have offered Tillman more than a minimum deal as a free agent, so trading for him might have been a form of “pre-agency.” Not only can he provide insurance in the playoffs if Al Horford or Kristaps Porzingis suffer an injury, but the Celtics also have more flexibility to re-sign him this summer if so desired.

Meanwhile, the Celtics acquired Springer without sending salary back by absorbing him into a trade exception. Because they’re over the apron this year, they’re going to lose access to the remainder of that trade exception after the regular season ends Sunday. In other words, they had to use it or lose it at the trade deadline, and they used it to absorb another inexpensive rotation player for next season.

The Celtics now have all of Tatum, Brown, Holiday, Horford, Porzingis, Springer, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard signed through at least the 2024-25 season. White and Horford are set to become unrestricted free agents in 2025, but the Celtics will have the core of Tatum, Brown, Holiday and Porzingis locked up through 2025-26 once Tatum signs his inevitable supermax extension.

If the Celtics lose White or Horford as free agents in 2025, they’ll likely have a tough time replacing either one. The same might even go for Porzingis in 2026 if he doesn’t sign another extension before then. The second apron basically makes teams choose between retaining their own players or withering away slowly.

The Celtics front office can deal with those decisions later. For now, they’ve clearly asserted themselves as the best team in the NBA this season. After signing Holiday to an extension Wednesday, they’re now poised to keep this group together until another team can catch up—in part because they don’t have much of a choice.

For better or worse, the Celtics are now pot-committed.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac or RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.