i wont tell you it wont happen. but i will tell you that if it does happen the celtics become hard capped, and they would prefer not to go there.
This is not a rhetorical question: What’s the problem is they become hard-capped?
My guess is something to do with the luxury tax.
It’s a salary rule, but it’s different than the tax. With the tax, as long as you have the rights or exceptions, you can pay as much as you like. Want to pay $10 million in tax, or $50M or even $100M? There are ways that can happen. One reason we talk about maybe going deep into the tax is that the Cs have Bird rights for some expensive players and a bunch of traded player exceptions. Those (and a few other things) give the team flexibility to spend.
The hard cap is what it sounds like - hard limit a team can’t exceed no matter what. No mid-level exception, no Bird rights, no traded player exception. No nothing. Try to go above and the league disallows the trade. The hard cap is triggered if a team receives a signed and traded player (which Ball would be).
Next year, with Tatum’s big salary increase, the Cs start the year pretty close to where the hard cap will be. The analysts who follow this stuff (Smith, Karalis) say any realistic scenario that acquires Ball is hard to find, but they haven’t really shown their numbers so I can’t give chapter and verse. The gist is they might need to shed a lot of salary and at best it would seriously limit the team’s flexibility to pick up other pieces they need.
