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The Path, Part II: What a full offseason reboot would look like for Celtics originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Editor’s Note: As the Celtics enter a critically important offseason, Chris Forsberg is exploring three different paths Boston can take this summer, each with their own pros and cons for the short- and long-term future of the franchise. The first path involved “threading the needle.”Today’s path: a full reboot.

Let’s preface this with a warning label: We don’t want to write about a reboot. You don’t want to read about a reboot. The mere idea of the Boston Celtics having to overhaul their championship core just one year removed from raising Banner 18 is unsavory on every level. 

But if we’re going to examine all of Boston’s potential pathways this offseason, then we have to include this route. It feels impossible that, just a couple weeks ago, we were pondering Boston’s very real potential to repeat as champs. Now we’re wondering if the best path forward is to strip this thing down for parts. 

Things change quickly in the NBA. That’s not breaking news. But a punitive new collective bargaining agreement is forcing teams to make tougher choices. 

In the second installment of our three-part series examining Boston’s murky offseason, we ponder the case to push the reboot button.

Objectives of this path:

• Get out of the luxury tax by trimming $40+ million in salary this summer.
• Complete the first of two years outside the luxury tax, with a goal of resetting restrictive repeater penalties.
• Dismantle the current core in favor of younger players and draft assets.
• Endure short-term pains for long-term rewards.

The road map:

• Trade Jaylen Brown and/or Derrick White, along with other core pieces.
• Fill out the roster with low-cost, high-upside talent.
• Allow Jayson Tatum to rehab for the entirety of the 2025-26 season.
• Embrace lottery status over playoff contention.

Why this path makes sense:

If the Celtics believe there is no immediate pathway to title contention while Tatum rehabs from Achilles surgery, and with the team already needing to trim at least $20 million in salary to get below the second apron, there is a case for bottoming out rather than residing in the unsavory middle of NBA contention. 

Boston would rebuild the core around Tatum with younger talent, which also would allow the team to organically reset its repeater tax penalties. All of that would position the Celtics to have maximum flexibility once Tatum is further removed from Achilles rehab.

Boston also might be in line to add a prized young player in a 2026 draft that is expected to be particularly flush with talent. 

Why this path might not make sense:

Let’s not sugarcoat it: The mere idea of trading a homegrown Finals MVP just plain sucks. So does the idea of potentially cashing out on a beloved adopted son like White.

There are also no guarantees that bottoming out is the best pathway back to title contention. Trading a pair of certified top-40 players might yield what seems like a bountiful return, but that doesn’t ensure those players/picks reach the same peaks as what’s currently in-house. You’d need a whole lot of help from the ping-pong balls, too. 

And losing a lot of games along the way wouldn’t be much fun, either.

Let’s (reluctantly) travel down this path:

If new Celtics owner Bill Chisholm steps to the podium after his $6.1 billion purchase is approved this summer and firmly states that he’s OK with the team lingering in the luxury tax for the foreseeable future, then the nuclear option might not even need to be a consideration. 

But if new ownership, in conjunction with Brad Stevens and his front office staff, determines that the most prudent path forward is to get out of the tax entirely, then difficult choices are inevitable. The reality is that the new CBA simply won’t allow teams to field two supermax players and stay below the tax without stripping to bare bones around them. 

The Celtics are committed to $228 million in salary for the 2025-26 season, and that’s before pondering the futures of free-agent big men Al Horford and Luke Kornet. The luxury tax line next season is $187.9 million.

That means Boston is roughly $40 million over the tax line and staring at a potential tax bill of $238 million if this core is maintained.

In Part 1, we noted how moving Jrue Holiday and Sam Hauser with limited financial return could shuffle the Celtics below the $207.8 million second-apron line next season. But Boston would have to trim another $20 million in additional salary to get below the $187.9 million tax line. Trying to get to that number without moving Brown and/or White is not impossible, but it is a challenge. 

The question ultimately comes down to this: Are the Celtics OK with lingering in the tax for the next handful of seasons to maintain a Tatum/Brown/White core?

That might have been an easy decision a couple weeks ago — even after a second-round exit this year — but Tatum’s injury and indefinite rehab adds a layer of complication to the decision.

The reality is that Brown might be at the doorstep of his 30th birthday before Tatum plays his next NBA game. White would be 32 at that point. While the Celtics might not necessarily be able to sell high on the tandem of Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis this summer, the team most certainly could command a more robust haul if Brown and/or White were made available.

Let’s (reluctantly) make some deals:

What would stripping this thing down look like? Well, even that’s not easy.

The Brooklyn Nets are the only team in the NBA projected to have cap space this offseason. Even trying to salary-dump a big contract in exchange for draft assets is virtually impossible without their help. Every other trade partner requires salary matching, which would force Boston to then re-route any undesirable veteran salary to a potential third (or fourth?) team.

Let’s say Gregg Popovich yearns to assemble a new Big Three in San Antonio and believes Brown helps the Spurs hop on the contention accelerator when paired with a healthy Victor Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox. San Antonio can build a package that features young talent (Devin Vassell? Keldon Johnson?) and prized draft assets (No. 2 pick in 2025? Return Boston’s 2028 pick swap?).

The Celtics still take back $48.2 million in that package, saving them just $8.6 million on next year’s cap. In that instance, the Spurs might be more likely to include just one young player and the expiring contract of Harrison Barnes, which would be routed to a third team.

Boston would utilize the No. 2 pick to select Dylan Harper, then lean heavily into his development over the next two seasons. With Vassell earning just 13 percent of the cap near the tail end of his current deal, the Celtics would have more flexibility to keep additional depth pieces around a Tatum core.

You can run the same exercise with the Houston Rockets, concocting a potential reunion of Brown with Ime Udoka. Alas, if Houston deems Amen Thompson as untouchable in deals, it’s harder to see a combination of picks and players that would entice Boston to move a player of Brown’s caliber.

With White making manageable money over the next three seasons, would a more established contender be willing to package a hefty collection of picks to pry him from Boston? The Knicks gave up five first-round picks to acquire Mikal Bridges on the eve of the 2024 draft. Could the Celtics generate multiple first-rounders in exchange for White given his ability to thrive in just about any situation?

The bottom line would be Boston moving off its big-money contracts beyond Tatum and embracing a youth movement in the 2025-26 season. Those deals would open a variety of pathways to proceed from there, with a goal of maximizing the rest of Tatum’s prime years once he’s fully recovered from Achilles surgery. 

The bottom line:

Let’s be absolutely clear: This does not feel like anyone’s preferred path. We’re strangely curious to see how the Celtics look with Brown at the helm next season and find that to be a far more digestible path than tearing apart the core.

But this new CBA will at least force the Celtics to ponder if a reboot is the best path back to surefire contender.

Stevens is paid to make decisions devoid of emotion. It wasn’t easy when he elected to overhaul the core in the summer of 2023, trading out Marcus Smart and Robert Williams III while bringing back the Porzingis-Holiday tandem. Those moves helped immediately deliver Banner 18. 

The perpetual question is, what are the moves that best position Boston to chase Banner 19? And sometimes you have to bottom out to get back to the top.

Tyrese Haliburton produced an electric first-half performance as the Indiana Pacers beat the New York Knicks to move to within one win of reaching the NBA Finals.

Haliburton registered 20 points, 10 assists and eight rebounds in the first half of a 130-121 win at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indiana.

Haliburton finished with 32 points, 15 assists and 12 rebounds without a turnover, making him the first player to record stats of 30-15-10-0 in an NBA post-season game.

The Pacers lead 3-1 in the Eastern Conference play-off finals.

Victory in game five at Madison Square Garden in New York at 01:00 BST on Friday will secure their place in the Finals for the first time since 2000.

"I felt like I let the team down in game three [a 106-100 home defeat], so it was important for me to just come out here and make plays," Haliburton said.

"Guys put me in position to make plays and play my game. It was a big win for us."

Pascal Siakam scored 30 points and Bennedict Mathurin 20 off the bench for fourth-seeded Indiana.

Jalen Brunson scored 31 points for New York, while Karl-Anthony Towns, who injured his left knee for the second consecutive game and was hobbling at the finish, scored 24 points and OG Anunoby 22.

"We scored 120 points but our defence wasn't good enough," Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said.

"Haliburton's a great player. You don't guard great players in this league individually. It's your entire team. And if one guy is not doing their job, everyone is going to look bad."

The winners of the best-of-seven series will play the Minnesota Timberwolves or the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Finals, which begin on 5 June.

The Thunder lead 3-1 in the Western Conference play-off finals.

INDIANAPOLIS – The Pacers are the 298th team in NBA history to take a 3-1 series lead. Only 13 teams (4.3 percent) have eventually lost the series.

If the Knicks don’t beat the odds by beating the Pacers in the next three games, the post-mortem analysis won’t be pretty.

The organization will have to ask itself several important questions.

Two of the most pressing questions are obvious ones:

Is Tom Thibodeau the right head coach for the team?

Is the roster good enough to compete for a title?

If the Knicks fall to Indiana, it will be the second straight year where the Pacers put up a roadblock on New York’s path to the NBA Finals.

Are the Pacers simply a better team than the Knicks? Why is that? Style of play? Coaching? Depth?

These are questions the Knicks will need to wrestle with if they lose one of the next three games.

In Game 4, they looked like a disjointed, overmatched group.

The transition defense broke down too often. They were sloppy (17 turnovers) and played into the Pacers’ high-speed offense. Indiana had 20 points off of those turnovers. The Pacers’ bench outscored the Knicks' reserves, 36-21.

Thibodeau leaned mostly on his starters and Josh Hart in the second half. It didn’t work well on Tuesday. Hart had five turnovers. The New York starters had 10 combined turnovers. The Mitchell Robinson-Karl-Anthony Towns front line hasn’t given New York enough of an advantage.

Mikal Bridges, Jalen Brunson and the rest of the Knicks’ perimeter defenders struggled against Tyrese Haliburton. The Pacers' two-time All-Star had a great floor game (32 points, 15 assists, 12 rebounds, zero turnovers).

“I got to do a better job," Bridges said afterward. "We got to do a better job of controlling [Haliburton in space] and helping each other."

The starting lineup featuring Robinson and Towns didn’t perform well on Tuesday. The group was outscored by eight points in 9:30. Robinson blamed himself after the game.

“Communication, that was the biggest thing. It started with me," he said. "I wasn’t talking first, and I’m the anchor of the defense. I’m not talking, nobody is."

Mitchell Robinson has been a difference-maker for the Knicks in these playoffs, especially against the Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals. But the big man had an uneven Game 4 on Tuesday, and that played a part in the Knicks' 131-120 loss.

Robinson played nearly 10 minutes in the first quarter and had just two points -- which isn't uncommon for the center -- but his one rebound and minus-8 on the court were concerning. His registering a minus-6 in just two minutes of second-quarter action was shocking. Without Robinson's boards, the Pacers were able to get second-chance opportunities and the Knicks could not get any of their own.

He was also uncharacteristically slow to assignments and on switches, which helped the Pacers shoot 56 percent from the field in the first half.

"Got off to a slow start, especially in the first half. Started picking it up in the second. Can’t allow that, especially at a time like now," Robinson said of his performance after the game. "Have to be better from the jump."

Robinson's second half was limited. He played just seven minutes but grabbed six boards -- five offensive -- and even scored four points. There was more energy and it helped the Knicks stay in the game, but the turnovers and defensive miscues doomed New York as Tyrese Haliburton put on a clinic, posting a 32-12-15 triple-double without turning the ball over as the Pacers took a 3-1 series lead.

Before the game, coach Tom Thibodeau said his team has to "have awareness" and communicate as much as possible: "Got to get everyone talking to the ball."

Robinson acknowledged the Knicks did not do that on Tuesday, but put the poor defensive performance on himself. When asked what was missing from the defense in Game 4, the longest-tenured Knick said communication.

"That started with me. I wasn’t talking first," he said. "I’m the anchor of the defense, if I’m not talking, nobody is. Allowed it to get away."

“Haliburton is a great player and you don’t guard great players in this league individually; it’s your entire team. And if one guy is not doing their job, everyone is gonna look bad," Thibodeau said after the loss. " And there’s a combination of things, whether we’re talking defensive transition, isolation game, pick-and-roll game, whatever it might be. It’s everyone being tight together and moving in unison and reading the ball correctly and making the right reads."

Robinson referred back to his slow start, and that he had to get "woken up" for the second half to turn things around for him -- he wouldn't divulge how he did that -- but his energy changed and expects that he and the team will learn from this loss and be prepared for Game 5.

And how do they do that?

"Come out with more urgency," Robinson said of what to expect on Thursday. "Go out there and get it done."

As the Eastern Conference Finals shift back to Madison Square Garden, Knicks fans are wondering if Karl-Anthony Towns will be 100 percent after suffering a knee injury during Game 4's loss to the Pacers.

The team listing Towns as questionable for Game 5 won't alleviate any worries. But that's what the Knicks did as their official injury report put the big man as questionable for Thursday with a knee.

With a little more than two minutes remaining in Game 4 and the Knicks down seven points, Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith drove to the basket and Towns came over to defend. Nesmith went up and both players' knees collided, causing the Knicks' big man to writhe in pain on the court. The Knicks medical staff looked after Towns as he stayed down in visible pain.

Towns would eventually get up and play the rest of the game with a visible limp.

Coach Tom Thibodeau and Towns didn't offer much about the knee after the game.

“He was able to go back in, so that’s a good sign," Thibodeau said. "We’ll see where he is after he gets evaluated.”

“I’m only thinking about the loss, I’m not thinking about that right now," Towns said. "It’s disappointing when you don’t get a win. We just didn’t do enough to get the job done tonight.”

With the Knicks down 3-1 and on the brink of elimination, it's unlikely Towns will miss Game 5, but how effective he'll be is still to be determined.

Poor defense and turnovers were the main culprits in the Knicks' Game 4 loss. Towns, whose 20-point fourth quarter led the comeback in Game 3, had 14 points in 14 minutes in the first half -- largely due to foul trouble -- but just 10 points in 23 minutes in the second half. He played 12 minutes in the final quarter but scored just two points on three shots.

It just wasn't a good game all around for the Knicks, who would be the first ones to tell you. But despite the somber mood after the loss, Towns feels this team has what it takes to come back and win this series, but understands it starts with one game.

"We've been a team that has kind of found a way to do the impossible when it always seemed impossible," Towns said of his team's resilience in the playoffs. "We just keep fighting. It's gonna be a testament to our whole playoff run. Now we have to be in one of the biggest fights of our lives and of our season. And that starts with the next game.

"Taking it game by game. Don’t look ahead. Worry about the first quarter of the next game and we’ll deal with the rest later."

After four games, the Knicks have identified the problem that has them in a 3-1 hole to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals: too many turnovers leading to confidence-boosting buckets and big deficits.

“We knew it was gonna be a fast game, and the priority was defensive transition to get set, but we hurt ourselves with our turnovers, putting them in the open floor,” Tom Thibodeau said after Tuesday’s 130-121 loss in Game 4.

“It’s tough to win against a team like that, who turn those turnovers into points,” Josh Hart said. “I had like four or five, just bad, stupid turnovers that you can’t have that lead to easy baskets that lead to momentum.”

New York’s full tab for the night: 17 turnovers (five by Hart) leading to 20 points for Indiana. The series total after 197 minutes of play: 60 turnovers.

“You turn it over against them, particularly the live-ball turnovers, you’re fueling the transition game,” Thibodeau said, hinting at his team’s sloppiness fueling the hosts to 22 fastbreak points.

“We scored 120 points, that’s plenty of points,” he added later. “But the defense wasn’t good enough. The rebounding wasn’t good enough, but the defense and our turnovers probably hurt us."

Jalen Brunson, who had three turnovers to his name, said a lot of them were self-inflicted.

“As a team we just need to tighten the screws when it comes to that,” he said. “Just being aggressive, if they were aggressive turnovers, they’d be different, but passive turnovers is not us.”

"I think I had three of them, just bad turnovers," Mikal Bridges said. "A team that plays that fast, you can't give them transition looks like that."

The problems were evident early as Tyrese Haliburton poured in 15 points in the first quarter and Pascal Siakam had 11, giving Indiana a 43-35 advantage. Haliburton would go on to tally a triple-double with 32 points, 15 assists, and 12 rebounds.

“He got off to a good start, and it’s hard when great players get confidence early, it’s hard to slow them down,” Thibodeau said of the Pacers’ guard. “So I thought the urgency to start the game and giving up the transition baskets, that hurts you because that gives players confidence, and then your job becomes much more difficult.”

“Didn’t get enough stops, they came with energy and physicality, set the tone for the game,” Brunson, who led the Knicks with 31 points, but was a minus-16 in 37 minutes, said.

And while the shooting slowed for both teams the rest of the way, the early success had the Knicks treading water early and playing a pace they couldn’t cope with, and the Pacers managed a double-digit lead for nearly the entire second half.

“The first quarter was problematic. That set the tone for the game, giving up 43 points,” the head coach said. “We started slowly and then fought back, but we didn’t close the [first] half well, last minute and a half wasn’t good.”

New York did manage a pair of short-lived one-point leads before taking a 6-0 run to close the half on the chin, leaving Brunson echoing his coach: “The way we responded second quarter was great, besides the last minute and a half.”

And the second half, which Thibodeau said they started “without great energy,” began with a Pacers bucket, a Knicks turnover leading to a fast-break dunk, another Knicks turnover, four straight missed shots from New York, and an Indiana three, forcing a timeout.

The 13-0 run going back to those final moments of the first half gave Indiana a 12-point edge. “Just playing catch-up from then on,” Brunson said.

Karl-Anthony Towns, who scored 24 points and was a plus-3 in his 37 minutes, said that sometimes you get burned after putting yourself in a hole too many times throughout the playoffs.

“Tonight was one of those nights where we got burned,” Towns said. “We put ourselves again into a deficit. We think that coming into the fourth quarter, we’re gonna find that one trick to get us to the end of the game to win and we just didn’t have that magic tonight.”

The Knicks cut a 15-point fourth-quarter lead to six with 3:17 to play in the fourth quarter, but another Pacers stiff-arm came in the form of an offensive foul and three missed jumpers from Bridges.

“Every game is gonna be hard-fought. Even in tonight’s game, we still had a chance in the end,” Thibs said. “Fight to win every possession that matters. You don’t know which possession makes the difference between winning and losing in the end, but each possession is critical.

“You want to make more winning plays than they do, and we haven’t done that. But that being said, it’s get ready for the next game.”