Did Jayson Tatum Injury Play Role In Celtics Trades? Brad Stevens Responds

Brad Stevens admitted the Jayson Tatum injury brought some clarity to the situation, but the Boston Celtics knew this sort of offseason was a possibility well before Tatum ruptured his Achilles during the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Speaking to reporters at The Auerbach Center on Tuesday, the Celtics president of basketball operations indicated the franchise would have been in cost-cutting mode whether or not Tatum suffered the devastating injury.

“I think the reality is that we knew going into this year, regardless of how it ended, that we were going to have some really hard decisions to make because of the penalties,” Stevens told reporters, as seen on NBC Sports Boston. “Because of the way this apron is and where we’ve been the last couple years. We’ve been now in it for two years, and it was the two years which are the least punitive years. And now that it’s fully kicked in three years after the CBA started.

“So that was part of making the decision to push and put our chips on the table and go for it the last two years, but we’ve known for a long time hard decisions were coming. And I think the agents and players have known that, too. That’s been pretty well communicated.”

Some questioned whether the Celtics would have traded Jrue Holiday and/or Kristaps Porzingis this offseason if not for the Tatum injury. Others questioned whether the Celtics would have accepted the strict penalties if the franchise went back-to-back and won an NBA title following the 2024-25 campaign. If fully healthy and repeat champions. would they try to pursue a three-peat regardless of what it would cost from a financial and team-building perspective?

Those questions are far in the past, of course. Not only did the Celtics not go back-to-back but they became less of a championship threat as soon as Tatum went down at Madison Square Garden. The perennial All-NBA honoree is expected to miss most, if not all, the 2025-26 campaign.

“Who knows? Where we end up, how it goes, who knows? There’s all kind of factors,” Stevens said. “That without question brings some clarity, but at the end of the day we’ve known, again, we were going to push that — we’ve been in that area, in that second apron area for two straight years. We knew that this was going to be, being in that a third-straight year was going to be very punitive.”

Stevens said the Celtics forecasted such punishments as far back as the Malcolm Brogdon trade in July 2022 and trade for Holiday in Oct. 2023.

So while Tatum’s injury might have been the piece that cemented their offseason mindset, it was far from the only brick to fall.