I am increasingly leaning towards the less talked about option that the TPE is held till the off season and used to facilitate a S&T
FA targets who could make sense
Otto Porter Jr
Evan Fournier
Tim Hardaway JR
Will Barton
Josh Richardson
Norman Powell
The Celtics won't use the TPE for a sign and trade because it would require the Celtics be under the apron just to complete the trade because it hard caps them.
Their salary for next year, with just 11 players and no cap holds is around $132 million, about just $9-10 million below the projected apron. If the Celtics draft a player in the first round, expect that difference between salary and apron to be only $7-8 million.
So if Boston wants to sign and trade a guy for $27 million, they would need to dump $20 million in salary before completing the sign and trade. Then the team would need to take another player and trade him, while not taking on extra salary, for two or three other players just to get to 14 or 15 players on the roster.
The Celtics got under the repeater tax this year to go over the apron for the foreseeable future. Ainge will not under any circumstances be signing and trading anyone into that TPE.
This is why people aren't talking about a sign and trade for the TPE.