Gordon Hayward and Marcus Morris are Celtics; Avery Bradley is a Piston (but will always be a Celtic). With that, a year of speculation on trade strategy, free agent plays, and cap minutiae comes to an end. The fall-out of the Kevin Durant pursuit concludes in the place we logically thought it would a year ago. The work for this offseason isn’t done though, and the question “what’s next?” never dies.

Getting to Gordon

First, Boston will follow a logical sequence of moves to clear the room to make the Hayward signing legal. One minor decision is to decide if the team wants to waive Jordan Mickey or Demetrius Jackson. Jackson has a partial guarantee for $650k that would have to be stretched over three seasons, so unless a team wants to trade for one of them I’m going to just assume Mickey will be waived and Jackson will return to the Summer League floor in Vegas.

The particular mechanics of the cap means that signing Hayward clears the value of a minimum contract, which then should allow the team to sign Ojeleye using cap space. Second round picks don’t carry an exception with them so signing them for a minimum contract or using the Room Exception (RME) limits their contract to two seasons. By using the last drop of cap space, the team could offer him up to a four year deal, probably with non-guaranteed seasons at the end.

The late second round picks Kadeem Allen and Jabari Bird seem the most likely recipients of the new “2-way” contracts for players focusing on the G-League. Their base salaries will be $75,000 but that doesn’t impact the team’s cap space.

Filling a Roster

Having made these signings, the team would then be at the salary cap and so have the $4.3M RME available to sign an additional free agent. At the moment, it looks like the team would be focused on a veteran big man. I’m not certain that will remain the case, but it’s the most obvious need with what we know now. Ante Zizic won’t be ready to play major minutes on a high seed and Al Horford will play center when the minutes really count, but needs to spend time next to a more rugged big to preserve his body during the regular season.

German big man Daniel Theis has already been announced as a Celtics’ signing. I believe the specific count of players we’re dealing with means they can’t fit him in using cap space. It’s possible that another trade could happen that makes it possible, but my guess is that he’ll just sign a two year deal using the minimum exception after other business is done. The first season has been reported as guaranteed.

Assuming they use the RME, that leaves a single roster spot between Demetrius Jackson (if it’s Mickey who gets released) and Abdel Nader. There is some thought that Nader could get a 2-way deal, but after a strong D-League campaign and solid Summer League showing, if I were him I would sign the non-guaranteed one year tender before taking a 2-way. He would either make the team or get cut, but if he gets cut someone else would pick him up, or he could make very good money overseas. More likely, the Celtics give him a partially guaranteed NBA contract and either find a roster spot for him or he gets cut like Ben Bentil did. Having retained Smart and Rozier, Nader’s higher league-wide value as a wing would place him as the favorite to make the team over Jackson if no other moves happen, I think.

Trade Opportunities

That basic glide path through the rest of the summer delivers a very good team that should project to win 55+ games. However, even if the team uses the Room Exception on a center it’s not the best balanced team ever. Regardless of if you want to call them small and power forwards or wings and swings, the team has a lot of players 6’6″ – 6’9″. This is a good problem but it will be hard to keep everyone happy and develop the younger players, so it’s possible they’ll look to move a wing for a big once they’ve gone over the cap.

It’s been difficult to make a trade over the past week because whatever the team did had to cut salary. After making the Hayward signing official they won’t have to worry about staying under the cap any longer and so can look to make trades using the over-the-cap salary matching rules where they could take more money than they send out.

Outgoing Players Outgoing Salary Exception Formula Maximum Incoming Salary Marcus Morris $5,000,000 175% + $100,000 $8,850,000 Marcus Morris + Demetrius Jackson $6,384,750 175% + $100,000 $11,273,313 Jae Crowder $6,796,117 + $5,000,000 $11,796,117 Jae Crowder + Demetrius Jackson $8,180,867 + $5,000,000 $13,180,867 Jae Crowder + Marcus Morris $11,796,117 + $5,000,000 $16,796,117

I find it very hard to believe that the team would trade Crowder at this point unless they get an All Star-level player in return. His contract is simply too valuable as the annual cap increases flatten out; a versatile, efficient, two-way player making 7% of the salary cap is worth his weight in gold.

Flipping Morris seems more likely. If the team wants to add a veteran big man on the trade market they could functionally flip Bradley for one that they couldn’t fit under the cap by using Morris as a weigh station. Players like Kosta Koufos, Cole Aldrich, and Ed Davis all make too much to fit under the cap pre-Hayward (Davis would but would have necessitated stashing Yabusele) but would be a salary match for Morris after the cap space is used up. Packaging Terry Rozier with Morris would put Derrick Favors and Nik Vucevic into the salary range.

Trading for a big would free up the team to use the RME on a more traditional shooting guard, if that’s seen as a weakness with Bradley gone. In the same vein, if the team could attract a reliable big like Dewayne Dedmon or Aron Baynes with the RME they could look to trade out for a quicker guard.

Charting the Tax Territory

Moves made this season need to be done with an eye on future luxury tax concerns. The free agent market has rationalized this summer (Knicks excluded) and should continue to put downward pressure on salaries next year. Even with that, if Isaiah Thomas shows his hip is healthy and has another All Star season you have to expect him to make $25M next year. You can hope to get him lower than that, but I think it’s wrong to plan assuming a deeper discount. If he gets that from Boston it’s $85M committed to Thomas, Hayward, and Horford from an estimated $123M luxury tax threshold.

Adding in just the players currently on the roster plus Marcus Smart for $10M and a single top-5 pick puts the projected salary and tax total around $175M. For reference, $175M seems to be the Warriors budget this year and is more than the Cavs have spent in any single season.

For that reason, Boston should talk to Marcus Smart about signing an extension. Rookie extensions are generally team friendly so if they could sign him for under $10M/year they should probably do it. If I were Smart I wouldn’t take that, but the RFA market and the PG market are both unpredictable and 4/$40M is still a lot of money. It’s possible that, even with Bradley traded, the team will not be able to retain Marcus next summer just on tax grounds. That’s part of why Terry Rozier is seen as so valuable.

That tax challenge is also why flipping Morris for a center could make sense, even if that big man only has one year left on his deal. That player could fill a role while also giving Zizic, Yabusele, and Theis room to grow. The franchise really needs at least one of those players to be ready to step into a major role by 2018-19. In that way, Boston may be the one team in the NBA who would prefer to have an $8M expiring big man than a $5M combo-forward with a second year on his deal. If you can work that market to pick up yet another pick in the process, all the better.

The “risk” in all of this is that Boston lands two top-5 picks, and in the best/worst case picks 1 and 2. Adding both of those players with Isaiah and Marcus and a player signed with the RME rolling forward to a second season could spin up a $200M salary+tax bill. The team would be thrilled to get that lottery result but it would mean additional difficult decisions.

Tax concerns aren’t going away anytime soon for Boston, or about half the league.

Pretender to Contender

If we’re honest, this team still isn’t a real contender. In a down period for the league maybe this group could steal a title but that’s not the case right now. The next trade target is well established. Celtics brass will be keeping a close eye on New Orleans; hoping they implode and Anthony Davis shakes loose on the trade market. By not trading any of their young or future pieces, they would still have the type of “upside and hope” package that a team could try to sell to their fans in a mega-trade.

If that doesn’t develop, I think Thomas and Horford would be more likely (though still unlikely) to leave than Jaylen Brown or Jayson Tatum or the premium picks. The present is great, but the future continues to be brighter. There are only a few players who we know could change that via trade so if they aren’t available you have to roll the dice on one of Tatum or Brown becoming a superstar, or both becoming All Star level players together.

The last jump is the hardest in the league. When teams without a top-5 player pull it off, it’s usually by setting up a prolonged period of fringe contention and simply having the stars align in one season. Hopefully an MVP does arrive in Boston via draft, development, or trade but there’s no promise of that. What this offseason has delivered is the promise of another highly competitive season, an even bright future, and a new series of challenges.

The below chart was updated July 19 to account for actual signings. This is a mix of actual, rejected, and estimated figures.

You can follow me on twitter @dangercart