Celtics GM Brad Stevens opens up on Boston’s offseason reset, new players and finances

BOSTON — As the Boston Celtics prepared to strip away major parts of their roster this offseason, Brad Stevens braced the rest of his organization for the harsh realities ahead.

Having gone through a dizzying stretch of trades early in his NBA coaching tenure, Stevens understood the potential emotional toll of the overhaul in front of him. The collective losses to come would leave an enormous hole inside the locker room and on the court, but Stevens deemed them inescapable. Staring at what would have been the largest payroll in NBA history, plus the harsh basketball penalties of the collective bargaining agreement, the Celtics would need to part with some key players — ones who were not just critical to their 2024 championship, but also carried themselves with the type of competitiveness and unselfishness Stevens aims to build teams around.

Inside his franchise, Stevens sought to be as upfront as possible about the remodeling on the horizon. Before trading Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis and losing Al Horford and Luke Kornet as free agents, Stevens said he laid out his offseason vision for “anyone who wanted to talk about it,” including coaches and players. In various conversations, Stevens explained the rationale for moving on from playoff-tested veterans and the desire to replace them with what he hoped to be cultural fits.

“We were very forthright with everybody,” Stevens said. “We tried to be as proactive (as possible) communicating that, ‘Hey, these things are gonna happen. We’re gonna bring in young, hungry, maybe unproven, maybe a little scarred, but high-character people that are gonna play hard, that want to be a part of something special.’”

When the Celtics open the regular season on Wednesday, they will do so with a renovated style and a new-look supporting cast. During a recent phone call, Stevens detailed to The Athletic his approach to a complicated and emotional offseason and his hopes for what can be gained from the team’s significant changes. Stevens opened up about his view of the punishing second apron, his appreciation for new owner Bill Chisholm and the importance of replenishing some of the basketball IQ and selflessness lost in the Celtics locker room.

“To me, that’s like the most important thing in the world is to be surrounded by people like that,” Stevens said, “and to have people like that on your team. But that just shows you the significance of these aprons in the CBA. That tells you how significant those things are.”

As much as Jayson Tatum’s torn Achilles in May shook the Celtics organization, Stevens said it was the Malcolm Brogdon trade three years earlier that started the clock for this summer’s roster reset. At the time of that move, which Stevens called the beginning of an all-in push, he and the front office recognized the payroll would eventually need significant trimming. The new CBA, enacted in 2023, only added to that need by levying new penalties on the highest-spending teams.

Even if Tatum had remained healthy, Stevens said he was anticipating cutting enough salary to push the Celtics under the second apron. If they had kept everyone from last year’s roster, they would have racked up an NBA record payroll this season of more than $500 million, including luxury taxes. Entering the regular season, they have cut that number by more than half, with a projected payroll of about $239 million, including taxes.

“First and foremost, what we were staring at was a bill like no one has ever stared at, right?” Stevens said. “So that was not the driver as much as the second apron, but that’s still a significant, significant thing. And our owners — past and present — have always been committed to spending, but it made sense for us, even in that perspective to retool, in my opinion. And then when you’re sitting over those aprons, you just have a lot of restrictions. You know, right now our 2032 (first-round) pick is frozen. That will be unfrozen if we’re under (the second apron) for three of four years.”

Despite the benefits of diving under the second apron, the decision to do so led to some agony for Stevens. He said he experienced sleepless nights during parts of the offseason, which he called “a really long month and a half.” On top of the Holiday and Porziņģis trades, which cut about $28 million in combined 2025-26 salaries, Boston’s financial situation also helped contribute to the free-agency departures of Horford and Kornet. Though the Celtics offered each of the big men contracts to stay in Boston, they were limited in the negotiations by how close they still were to the second apron. Stevens said Horford and Kornet received “better offers elsewhere.” Their departures to Golden State and San Antonio, respectively, solidified the need for Stevens to seek certain types of people — not just players — while filling out his revamped supporting cast.

“We know what we’re moving from a contract standpoint, but bigger than that, from a level of player and even bigger than that, a level of person,” Stevens said. “And that became even more obvious when (Horford and Kornet left). That became the priority. It was not only that, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta reset and retool,’ but the people we bring into this place — whether through the draft or a trade or a signing — yes, we’re looking for maybe some young, proven, cost-effective people, but at the same time, they have to be high character and they have to be high competitive character. Because if they’re not, we’re just losing too much in that area to sustain it.”

Chisholm’s introduction to team ownership must have been jarring. Two months after his group agreed to buy the Celtics in March, Tatum ruptured his Achilles during an unexpectedly quick playoff exit. Over the offseason, Boston then went through a teardown that involved losing three more former All-Stars and one of the NBA’s most consistent backup centers without acquiring any starters from other teams. Though Chisholm has emphasized a willingness to spend for championships, Stevens and the Celtics decided cutting back on expenses was wiser over the offseason.

“This was going to be our third straight year over the second apron if we didn’t do something,” Stevens said. “We had already had those discussions long before that. And I think that everybody involved knew to some extent. You know, players, coaches, agents, everybody knew that this wasn’t gonna be a sustainable thing forever. And so we needed to try to maximize that (while it lasted). But yeah, I called Bill and told him in the midst of it, ‘Hey, I just appreciate the way you’re thinking about it and going about it. Because you agreed to buy the team in March and there’s a lot of tough decisions and tough things that you have to go through in your first six months. That’s not easy.’

“It’s one of the reasons why I’m so impressed with him because it’s like, he’s just got such a level, measured approach. And I have been thankful for that for sure because this could certainly have been an emotional roller coaster for anyone and certainly was for me to just decide to make the deals and to retool.”

As painful as the summer was, Stevens is hopeful it will provide enough flexibility to chase his team’s next big strike. Teams above the second apron cannot aggregate players in a trade or take back more in salary than they send out. As Stevens pointed out, such restrictions would have stopped the Celtics from pulling off many of their most important acquisitions in recent seasons, at least as those deals — for Brogdon, Holiday, Porziņģis and Derrick White — were structured.

“If you’re going to have to reset and retool, what you’re trying to do is you’re just trying to give yourself a chance to be opportunistic if that presents itself,” Stevens said. “We lived it. We knew it was coming. And, you know, it wasn’t the most fun summer for a GM or a front office person but we knew that that was part of the pain of A) going all-in in the last couple of years and then B) making sure we give ourselves a chance to continue to be opportunistic around our young core — and our core is still young and still very, very good.”

Around that core, the Celtics have reinvented themselves. Based on all indications throughout training camp and the preseason, they intend to adopt a radically different playing style. Without nearly as much established talent, they are hoping to beat opponents with waves of energy. Certain areas they have struggled with for most of Mazzulla’s tenure, such as forced turnovers and offensive rebounds, now rank among their biggest emphases. Mazzulla appears likely to employ a rotation of 10 or more players, with a reliance on short stints so that each player can give maximum effort the entire time he’s on the court.

With Mazzulla leading the way, the Celtics set an intense tone throughout what players considered an incredibly difficult training camp. Though Mazzulla has liked their approach so far, he wants to see them persevere through bigger tests.

“The thing about training camp is there’s no stress, there’s no duress,” Mazzulla said. “The game’s not on (national) TV, there’s no stats. There’s none of that stuff, so there’s nothing on the outside forces testing. All those little things that test your human nature, that test your togetherness. There’s no losing streaks, none of that stuff matters, and I imagine we go through a bunch of that stuff throughout the year. So we just have to fight to maintain the level which we have now when all the outside forces adhere themselves to.”

The Celtics are transforming out of necessity. It was still a priority for Stevens to sustain the competitive fabric that has helped produce so much recent success. That was one of the points he stressed to Boston players and coaches when first informing them how turbulent the offseason would be.

“Obviously, Joe and I talk about those things all the time,” Stevens said. “I mean, listen, the last thing I want is for any of our coaches to not be in a position to really put everything they have into it and be enthusiastic about it. And I think that the right people on the team, the right competitive character on the team, that’s super fun to coach. And then you get to really maximize the team. And I don’t know what that looks like right now. I’ll evaluate it like everybody else will, but I like the way we’ve started and our emphases. There’s been some carryover which has been nice.”

With the CBA so new, the Celtics were the first championship team to run face-first into severe second apron issues, but they won’t be the last. Stevens said, “there’s no question” the stiffer CBA penalties will breed more parity throughout the NBA. He believes the current rules “make every decision that much more important and every contract that much more important.” As grueling as his decisions were over the offseason, he said he has seen nothing but enthusiasm from his players and coaching staff as they prepare for the new season.

“It’s a different challenge in a lot of ways,” Stevens said. “But I think that challenge is always made easier when we start with the core we still have and, oh by the way, we have a first team All-NBA player that’s sitting in street clothes still. So, you know, we’re in really good shape versus (how) people that go through these decisions later on will be.”