Celtics’ Brad Stevens Made This Admission After Seismic Trades

The Boston Celtics kind of blew things up this offseason…

We haven’t talked about it in such simple terms, but how else would you describe trading two pivotal members of your championship roster (Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday), letting a top depth piece find a new home (Luke Kornet) and essentially giving up on re-signing a franchise icon (Al Horford)?

It’s probably not fun to hear, but that’s what the organization decided to do.

Why? Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens laid out the truth during his press conference on Tuesday.

“The second apron is why those trades happened. I think that’s pretty obvious… but we were fortunate because we like the guys we got back,” Stevens said, per Bobby Krivitsky of Forbes.

Stevens, of course, was referring to the trades of Porzingis and Holiday, which got the organization back around the second apron and will ultimately allow it to avoid nearly $240 million in tax penalties for 2026 — and returned the likes of guard Anfernee Simons and wing Georges Niang. It’s smart business, especially with the expectation being that Jayson Tatum will miss the majority — if not all — of 2025-26.

Stevens not only said the quiet part out loud, but helped explaining the basketball advantages that come with avoiding the repeater tax.

“(Celtics owner Bill Chisholm) has been pretty clear from the get-go that we make sure we’re prioritizing basketball assets and to retool as fast as we can,” Stevens said. “… There’s benefits to (avoiding the repeater tax), but it’s not the priority. The priority is making sure we continue to have our future first and all these things that are in play for us, to make sure that we can continue to build.”

The Celtics’ next championship core will look a lot different from its last, but in deciding to make that the case so early, the club has put itself into a better position moving forward.