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It’s looking like a fire sale in Boston.
Fresh off trading key pieces of their 2024 championship team in Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, the rest of the NBA wants to see if the Celtics will move their Finals MVP, Jaylen Brown, along with complementary two-way wing Derrick White.
“It means them phone lines are ringing in Boston,” ESPN’s Shams Charania said on “SportsCenter with Scott VanPelt” on Tuesday following Porzingis heading to Atlanta in a three-way deal.
“My understanding is the Celtics are getting offers, calls on both Jaylen Brown and Derrick White. The Celtics have high price thresholds for both players. We know how great Jaylen Brown and Derrick White are. I’m sure they’re getting some massive offers, some pretty big-time calls as well. Their preference has been to keep both players but this is a team that is still in the first apron, still a luxury tax team, still dealing with the uncertainty of Jayson Tatum’s status next season.”
Charania said earlier Tuesday on the “Stephen A. Smith” show before the Porziginis trade that there were multiple teams with “significant” interest in Brown.
He mentioned that Eastern Conference teams could be looking to make a big swing considering the Celtics (Tatum), Pacers (Tyrese Haliburton) and Bucks (Damian Lillard) all could be without superstar players for most of — if not all — of the 2025-26 season due to injuries.
That Boston is even thinking of moving Brown and/or White is the harsh reality for a team that had been in the second tax apron and may be without Tatum for the entire 2025-26 season after he tore his Achilles in Game 4 of the Celtics’ second-round series loss to he Knicks.
Boston is playing the delicate game of trying to reconfigure its roster and get below the second apron while still maintaining a championship window.
Moving Porzingis and trading Holiday to the Blazers already helped the Celtics get under the second apron in the new, and very complicated, salary cap rules.
Trading Brown, whose $49 million salary for the 2025-26 season will be the league’s sixth-largest mark thanks to the $304 million deal he signed in 2023, surely will be complicated due to that massive cap hit.
Charania mentioned Sam Hauser and newcomer Anfernee Simons, acquired in the Holiday deal, as other potential trade candidates.
“Will a team match that price threshold that the Celtics I’m told have set around the league for Jaylen Brown and Derrick White to be able to get them? They are listening, but will a team get there?” Charania said on the eve of the 2025 NBA Draft. “Just in the span of the last two days, though, they’ve shed $180 million in luxury tax savings. They’ve gotten out of the second apron, but with a season next year full of uncertainty, just how much do they want to get out of the aprons and the taxes?”
Several teams are positioned well to make swings for a superstar, including the Nets, who are hoarding five draft picks in Thursday’s NBA Draft.
Brooklyn has been linked to Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo by The Post’s Brian Lewis, but there are questions about whether he will be made available.
The Houston Rockets, who just traded for Kevin Durant, could also be in the mix, considering they own plenty of the Suns’ future draft picks and still retained young players Tari Eason and Jabari Smith.
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