The Celtics’ second apron problem is the reason a championship roster got broken up one year after winning a title. Boston traded Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis in June 2025 to get below the NBA’s second apron, a hard-cap threshold set at $207.824 million for 2025-26 that carries roster-building penalties severe enough that team president Brad Stevens said publicly the trades happened because of it. With Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown earning a combined $107 million this season on supermax deals that keep climbing, the apron will shape every Celtics decision for years.
Where the Celtics Sit on the 2025-26 Cap Ladder
The NBA stacks four spending lines above the base salary cap, each one triggering harsher consequences than the last:1NBA.com. NBA Salary Cap for 2025-26 Season Set at $154.647 Million
- Salary cap: $154.647 million
- Luxury tax level: $187.895 million
- First apron: $195.945 million
- Second apron: $207.824 million
Boston’s payroll for 2025-26 lands near $194.5 million. That puts the team roughly $6.6 million above the luxury tax line, just under the first apron, and comfortably below the second apron. The projected luxury tax bill alone comes to about $40 million on top of actual salaries.
The two contracts driving the math are the ones the Celtics chose to keep. Tatum’s five-year, $314 million supermax pays him about $54.1 million this season and rises to roughly $58.5 million in 2026-27. Brown’s five-year deal worth approximately $304 million pays about $53.1 million this year and around $57.1 million next year. Derrick White, the third-highest-paid Celtic, earns about $28.1 million. Those figures are what made staying under the second apron impossible with Holiday and Porzingis still on the books.
What the Second Apron Would Have Cost the Celtics
The second apron functions as a hard cap. A team that triggers it cannot exceed that dollar figure for the rest of the season under any circumstance. Layered on top of that ceiling are operational restrictions that no amount of ownership spending can buy around.
A second-apron team loses the taxpayer mid-level exception, worth $5.685 million in 2025-26.2NBA.com. NBA Salary Cap for 2025-26 Season Set at $154.647 Million The only outside free agents available are those willing to sign minimum contracts. For a team trying to fill rotation spots around expensive stars, that alone eliminates most useful signings.
Trade flexibility collapses. Second-apron teams cannot aggregate multiple player salaries to match a larger incoming contract, cannot send cash in trades, and cannot use trade exceptions generated from earlier sign-and-trades. Salary coming in has to be matched dollar-for-dollar by salary going out, with no cushion. Sign-and-trade acquisitions that would keep the team above the apron are also off-limits, an inherited restriction from the first apron along with the loss of the non-taxpayer mid-level and bi-annual exceptions.
What remains: re-signing your own free agents, signing draft picks, signing minimum-salary players, and making tight one-for-one trades. That is the entire toolbox.
The Frozen 2032 First-Round Pick
Boston already spent the 2024-25 season above the second apron, and the draft penalty from that season is now in effect. Under the 2023 CBA, a team that finishes above the second apron has its first-round pick seven drafts later frozen and untradeable. For the Celtics, that is the 2032 first-rounder.
The freeze reaches further than a single pick. NBA rules require teams to hold first-round picks in consecutive drafts for trade purposes, so the frozen 2032 selection also locks up the 2031 first-rounder. Two draft classes worth of tradeable assets are off the table.
The pick can thaw. If Boston stays below the second apron in at least three of the four seasons following the violation, the 2032 pick becomes tradeable again. But if the team exceeds the second apron in two or more of those four seasons, the frozen pick also drops to 30th overall, regardless of where the Celtics actually finish in the standings. A pick that is both untradeable and pushed to the back of the round loses most of its value. That clock runs through the 2028-29 season and shapes every payroll decision along the way.
Why Holiday and Porzingis Were Traded
Keeping the full 2024 championship core — Tatum, Brown, White, Holiday, and Porzingis — would have pushed Boston well past the second apron and kept them there. Holiday alone was earning about $33.6 million annually on a four-year, $134.4 million deal. Both players moved in a three-team trade in June 2025.
Stevens said directly that the second apron was why the trades happened and that the basketball penalties tied to it are real. The front office’s conclusion was that frozen draft picks, the inability to aggregate salary in trades, and the loss of signing exceptions would compound across multiple seasons into a bigger competitive hit than losing two starters right now. That is the apron working the way the 2023 CBA was designed to make it work. Before the new agreement, an owner willing to write large tax checks could keep an expensive roster together indefinitely. The operational restrictions changed that calculation because money cannot restore lost trade tools or unfreeze a draft pick.
What the Celtics Can Still Do Below the Apron
Sitting above the luxury tax but below the second apron preserves the tools that matter most for filling out the roster. Boston still has access to the taxpayer mid-level exception at $5.685 million.2NBA.com. NBA Salary Cap for 2025-26 Season Set at $154.647 Million The team can aggregate salaries in trades, send cash to grease deals, and use trade exceptions. Each of those tools disappears the moment the payroll crosses $207.824 million.
The shape of the roster reflects the tradeoff. Around Tatum, Brown, and White, the Celtics are filling spots with younger players on cost-controlled deals and veterans on minimums. Internal development matters more than it did when four max-level players shared the floor. Every draft pick carries more weight because free agency and the trade market no longer offer easy upgrades.
The apron thresholds rise each year with league revenue, which gives Boston some breathing room as the cap climbs. But with Tatum’s and Brown’s salaries also scheduled to rise, staying below the second apron in three of the next four seasons — the condition for unfreezing that 2032 pick — is the constraint that will drive Celtics roster building through the rest of the decade.