Letting that 17.2M TPE expire was all I needed to see that Wyc and the ownership group have not given Brad the green light to spend. There were guys available that could have fit it for sure. How much in TPE's have we let expire over the past handful of years? It's a lot!
Pretty much the only somewhat realistic option for using this TPE that has been offered is that we could have traded for Alec Burks ($10M salary). He ended up having a good season (for a bench guy) so far in Detroit and he plays a position of need. But he got traded to Detroit with Nerlens Noel and his $9.2M of dead weight salary. I don't believe that there is any way we could have taken back both of them. I see that including Noel in the deal was a big plus for the Knicks. Not sure they do the deal otherwise. It is certainly not a given that we could have had Burks (without Noel) if we wanted him.
I don't know what trades were discussed or not (no one does) but I don't understand how people can offer these blanket criticisms that Wyc is cheap because the Celtics didn't trade for Alec Burks. Earlier in this discussion, it was often suggested that we should use that TPE and trade with DET for Noel, just so that we would have some salary to use in some other trade. To me, that would have been a total waste, you don't see that being suggested so much anymore.
If you look at the off season, the Celtics signed Gallinari (+$6.5M) and traded for Brogdon (net about +$10M in salary per Mass Live), signed Hauser (basically min contract), and signed a bunch of min contracts to round things out. At the deadline, they added Muscala (+$3.5M). Again, I don't know what deals they may have passed on, but I think they spent their money pretty well.
Per Mass Live:
Overview: The Brogdon deal did not touch any of these exceptions since they were a straight up deal with salary matching. However, the odds of Boston using any of the exceptions this summer went down considerably after the Brogdon deal since it upped Boston’s payroll for next year by about $10 million. That combined with the Gallinari deal makes the Celtics roster look very full at the moment. The Celtics could try to add a cheap piece via trade with any of these TPEs but don’t look for any more big names to fill the exceptions without any salary being sent out.