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Locked On Celtics - Daily Podcast On The Boston Celtics
How NBA Expansion Could CHANGE THINGS for the Boston Celtics
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NBA expansion looms, threatening to reshape the playoff landscape and redefine the Boston Celtics’ future. Will Seattle and Las Vegas entering the league spark a seismic shift for Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Derrick White? John Karalis of Celtics On SI explores the ripple effects of potential expansion drafts, roster protection strategies, and contract dilemmas as star players approach pivotal ages and salary milestones. Major talking points include how divisional realignment could bring the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Eastern Conference, increasing competition for the Celtics, and what a $500 million expansion payout means for team spending power. With gamesmanship around player contracts, trade restrictions, and strategic tax resets, the Celtics could gain unique advantages—or face unexpected setbacks. Will Boston maintain its dominance, or will expansion rewrite the path to a championship?
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Foreign podcast Network your team every day.
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This is Nick Gangstead of the Lockdown Mavericks podcast. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I love that I can earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase with my Apple Card, which can be automatically sent to my High Yield Savings account through Apple Card right in the Wallet app with my iPhone. I can use Apple Card with Apple Pay basically everywhere I go.
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this is Wes Goldberg from Locked on NBA and Locked On Heat with a message From Dell. Dell PCs with Intel Insight are built for the moments that you plan for and the ones you don't. The moments that you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken. Or the times that you're deep in your flow and can't be interrupted for an auto update. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to you with long lasting battery and built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you work@dell.com XPS built for you.
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The NBA is talking about expansion. How does that impact the Boston Celtics? It's bonus content right here on the Lockdown Celtics podcast where it is your team every day. Your team is the Boston Celtics and I talk about that Monday through Friday bonus podcast throughout the week, on the weekends when they play. So make sure you're subscribed. This way you get the show whenever it drops. These bonus podcasts a little more casual, a little bit shorter technically usually supposed to be shorter. You can tell I'm in a different setting here if you're watching on YouTube, which you should be because that's where the comment section is. But if you're listening, it doesn't matter where I'm sitting. So thanks for being here with me every day. You're an every day and I appreciate it. I'm John Corrales. I'm a beat writer covering the Celtics for Sports illustrated Celtics on SI. I've been doing version of this job for about 20 years. I've been doing this podcast for 10. Today we're talking a little bonus with my my guy Speedy right here. This little guy who's if you're again on YouTube, I'm sitting on my couch. I'm sitting on my couch because my big Dog got ACL surgery. By some miracle, I am not the first being in this house to get ACL surgery. My other dog, so he's sitting so he can't come down to my office. So I'm. I'm meeting him where he's at so we can lay down and I can keep an eye on him. So that means the little guy is cozying up next to me on the couch. So we're having a little bit of fun. Me, you, speedy, Teddy. We're just having a blast. Talking about expansion and the Celtics later on, I'll get into. Well, basically, we're going to get into a few ways the. The Celtics are impacted by. By this. I'll talk about the financial stuff later on. The potential shift in divisions and conferences is coming up. But let's just start with the big thing when everybody talks about expansion is an expansion draft. Right? What's this going to cost the Celtics? Things are going to change for the Celtics, no doubt for the entire league. The reporting is that at some point in the next couple of weeks, the NBA owners are going to vote on whether to expand. This is happening. The momentum is. Is swinging in that direction. We're not at this point for the league to be like, nah, never mind. Right? We've gotten to this point. Adam Silver has said on multiple occasions, we're done. We're done teasing Seattle. We're done teasing Las Vegas. Those are the cities. This. It's very much like George Costanza. Jerk store is the joke. I'm going with jerk story. Seattle and Las Vegas are the cities. We're going with Seattle and Las Vegas. So they're going to get their teams. The first thing that's going to happen. Well, a couple things gonna happen in rapid succession, I suppose. But the thing you're. You care about the most is expansion draft. And I understand fully why people would say, okay, well, let's just do an expansion. Let's do a fake expansion draft, protect eight players. Which eight players are you protecting? And all of that stuff. And it's a fun exercise. I'm not gonna do it. You know why? Because I deal with reality, and I'm not trying to be a buzzkill. That's a fun little exercise when you look at this roster. But it doesn't matter what we. I can say, okay, I'm just going to protect Amari Williams. I'm going to leave Jalen and Jason open. People can go, what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I say, because the draft won't happen. Until 2028. So it's 2026. It doesn't matter. It's not worth, to me, that mental energy. What it's worth is looking at what the Celtics are going to be like then because at that point under contract in 2028, currently, obviously this will be different when we get there, but Jason Tatum for 67 million, Jaylen Brown for 65, Derrick White very likely for about 35 because that's a player option. I'm assuming that he's going to pick that up. Sam Houser for 12 and a half and a team option on Hugo Gonzalez for five and a half, which I'm going to assume by then they will have picked that up and potentially they will have extended him, but that's what they have right now. Everyone else is an unrestricted free agent except for Baylor Scheireman, who will be a restricted free agent. So the Celtics still have some level of control over Sherman at that point. So three players guaranteed under contract. One in Derrick White that's probably under contract. Hugo Gonzalez almost definitely. But we don't know what's going to happen at that point. So that's where the Celtics are also. The most important thing to me in addition to the money is the ages that these guys are going to be in 2028, because you look at Jaylen Brown, he's. He's going to be 30 next year, 31 the year after that. So the year he's heading into potential expansion draft, he'll be 32 years old, making $65 million. And I bring that up, Let me add this. Derrick White, he's 31 now, so 32, 33. He'll be 34 the year he's making $35 million. Okay. Going that'll be the season after the expansion draft, the first season of expansion. So 34 year old Derrick White, what's that gonna, what's that gonna look like? I'm, I'm less concerned about 32 year old Jalen Brown, but once you're at that point in your 30s, things start to turn a little bit. It's not. And it's different for different people. Some people when they turn 32, it's like, wow, things are starting to slow down. Other people, it doesn't, it really doesn't look like that anything has changed. And he'll look very much like himself as you know, in his prime. Maybe a couple of little note like barely noticeable changes, but regardless, those are going to be, I think, key elements. Let's just assume we don't even Know what the expansion draft is going to be like at that point? How many players do they get to protect? There's. You see some reporting today. I think it was Keith Smith that was talking about friend of the show Keith Smith at Spotrack, talking about some teams are looking at trying to change the expansion draft one way. Other teams are looking to expand, change it to go the other way. So teams want to protect more guys and protect more than eight. And some teams want, obviously they want to know we want teams to be able to lose two players. So we don't know what that expansion draft is going to look like at that point. So there's, there's the possibility of some kind of game that the Celtics could play. Maybe with Jalen Brown, maybe, maybe more likely with Derrick White, 34 years old, $35 million for a team. If you're drafting from other teams, right, you're doing the expansion draft. Is that a player you want to add to your team? So the Celtics could look at the landscape and say whatever their roster looks like at eight players, you know, whatever, eight players, let's just assume it's eight. Maybe they don't protect Derrick White, maybe they don't protect Jalen Brown. Because you say 32 million, I mean 32 years old and at 65 million, is that something that the other team is going to want? Seattle or Vegas, are they going to want that? Is Jalen going to be the type of player that you can build now? They might say yes because he's young enough and good enough at that point. So that's a little bit more far fetched. But Derek White At 35 million and 34 years old, you say we're going to roll the dice, we're going to roll the dice on this. At that point I still expect him to be pretty good, but his athleticism could start to wane. At 34 years old, he's not a big dude. So is that going to help him or hurt him? Less weight on the joints, that could be helpful. But could it also be more of a wear and tear on him just getting beat up because he's 190 pounds. And you know, the rigors of the NBA can, can take a toll on a body. So wherever he is there, you might say we're going to protect eight other guys and, and leave Derrick White unprotected even though we want him. Because we don't think Seattle or Vegas is going to want 34 year old Derrick White at $35 million. It's just a little too Expensive at that age. But however, it is a one year expiring contract. So they might say, hey, we will take Derrick White, we will take a culture setter. So there are games back and forth. Maybe the Celtics extend Derrick White and that changes the dynamic. So there's going to be a lot of gamesmanship. A lot of this is to me a real kind of shell game in a way where you're, you're, you're kind of the salaries that the Celtics now hand out. You consider the expansion draft. Now on top of the potential to trade somebody, the potential to how long, how far out, you give them contracts so they can, you know, do you want to leave a guy vulnerable or do you want to protect him or do you want to entice somebody to take him? There's so many different elements here that just goes beyond who do you protect? It's what kind of contract do you give, who do you leave unprotected? What do you think the, you know, what do you think the other teams in the league are going to do? Because other teams are going to have big stars. This could be a sort of get out of jail free card for some teams where you're like, you know what? We're going to give this guy a bunch of money and say, I don't know, I don't know. Pick, pick a guy around the league in two years if, if he's, if we just leave him unprotected, Seattle or Las Vegas might say, you know what? We're just, we are going to take this guy. It's not working out over there, but for a couple of years here we'll take, it doesn't matter. We're not going to win. We know we're not winning a championship, but this is going to be a selling point. So maybe teams give some, somebody a little extra money, a star player a little extra money to, to get, take a chance on them. But also say, and in the, in the expansion draft, we'll just leave them unprotected. And if he goes, you know, oh, no, please don't take the guy that we overpaid. So the, it's so much more complicated than just protecting your top eight guys. It's not just protect your top eight guys. There's a lot of gamesmanship that goes on there. When I come back, we'll do. I think I'm just going to do two segments today. We're going to, when I come back, we're going to do the conference, the divisions potentially changing, and that one extra thing that the Celtics could benefit from in just a minute. Today's show is. Today's show is brought to you by five Hour Energy. Let's do a quick five Hour Energy flavor draft. I know that this is something that we've been doing over the past couple of weeks. We're talking about expansion drafts. Let's talk about the flavor draft now. They've got a ton of different flavors at 5 hour energy. All of them sound really good, super, you know, tasty, some sweetness there, but no sugar in any of them. So if you want something that feels sugary but maybe not, there's cotton candy, there's confetti craze. I am one that I go for fruity type stuff. Maybe the mix in the, in the middle. Let's, let's compromise. 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So very simple to go to Zocdoc.com lockdown MBA so you can start stop putting off these doctor's appointments. You have verified patient reviews and all of that. So whether you want to go in person or a video visit, Zocdoc makes it easy Zocdoc.comlockdown MBA to find and instantly book your doctor, a doctor that you love today. Zocdoc.com lockdown MBA thank you to Zocdoc for sponsoring this show. All right, thank you all for being here for this bonus podcast. I appreciate you. If you want to be on the Everydayer club, you can lockdown celtics.supercast.com check that out there. Five bucks a month, 50 bucks for the year ad free audio. You can get onto our our Discord server. You've got another day to use the code March to get a month free. And if you get in right before Thursday, you can get entered into the the NCAA tournaments, men's and women's brackets, men's and women's bracket pools. If you win, you get 100 bucks in lockdown merch. So check it out at locked on celtics.super cast.com use the code MARCH. So a few other things here for expansion that we have to consider. East will get tougher because you're gonna add two teams out west. It's gonna be Seattle out west, Las Vegas out west. So you're gonna have to move a team east to accommodate for that. So your candidates are Memphis, Minnesota, New Orleans. I would love for it to be New Orleans because I would love to have an in conference visit down to New Orleans. It's my favorite city outside of Boston, so that'd be fun. I don't think I'm gonna get my wish granted there. I think what the NBA is going to want to do is use this opportunity to even out the conferences. So you take two bad teams, put them in the west. You take the one. One of the best Western Conference teams, the Minnesota Timberwolves, obviously up and down, obviously still figuring themselves out. But Anthony Edwards is a bonafide star and if one of the future, one of the faces of the league. Not even future, one of the current faces of the league and you put him in the East. So now Minnesota becomes a favorite potentially. And it's a couple of years from now, so we don't know what they're going to be like in a couple of years. But Minnesota potentially with Anthony Edwards is at the top of the, at the top of the east with presumably Boston, presumably Detroit. We'll see about Cleveland, we'll see about New York. You know, Orlando could ascend, Indiana could ascend. So the, the east, you add one more good team to the east, that makes things a little bit more difficult. Right. It changes where the Celtics path is going to be. And this is going to be the, I think the biggest other element for the Celtics. The expansion doesn't just potentially cost them a player, maybe two. We'll see how the rules end up changing. But also the conference and division, potentially realignment. They're adding two teams here. And so you're going to have 32 teams, two conferences of 16. That's going to break things down a little bit differently. You can move some things around geographically. And instead of three divisions, because three divisions right now of teams of five makes sense with 15 in each conference. You're not just going to throw Minnesota into another conference, into another division and put six teams into. In one division, why not take advantage of the four? Obviously you can do four divisions of four. Why not do that? Are the cell. Are. Are the. Is the NBA going to do that? Do they go two divisions of eight and do something wild? That way they can change things out a lot of different ways. So right now, not clear. Obviously we're all just speculating but how this is doled out impacts how every team in the east, including the Boston Celtics, will be impacted. Adding a good team, changing the divisions around. Will you now give all four, if it's four division winners, the tie break. And right now, if you're tied, if you win the division you're in, if it's with a team, so let's just say Celtics and Pistons ended up tied, the winner of the division of each respective division would be in. Now, if that's the Celtics, you know that that's a bad example because the Celtics will win their division and the Pistons would win theirs. But let's just say you, you know what I'm saying? If the Celtics were tied with another team and one team won the division and one team didn't, the team that won their division would get the tiebreaker. That's the first one. And then you go to the other tiebreakers, head to head, record, conference record, all that other stuff. Do you, do you give the four division winners that tiebreaker? Now how do you, how do you work that out? How do you, how do you schedule teams? Do you do. Is it's still an 82 game season, which I assume that it would be, but it may not be. So the Celtics path to the championship would be much different in an expansion scenario. So it's not just adding two teams out west, it's reconfiguring everything and, and throwing, you know, maybe a roadblock or, or a different. Just kind of look at the Celtics in the east in their division, and a lot of questions that need to be answered by the competition committee as well. But finally, the one thing that I think would be huge for the Celtics is they'll get a payout of something like $500 million, which the Celtics are. If they're able to. They're going to stay under the tax this year. If they're able to do it next year, which they don't have to, but they'd like to, if they can do it next year and they reset the repeater tax and they get an expansion fee on top of that. Now think about, just think about when you get a bonus at work or if you get a bonus at work, or if you come upon a. Just a, a bunch of money, you get a few extra. If you get an extra 500 bucks, do you splurge? Sure. Everybody says, okay, yeah, man, look, a little extra money. Now I'm gonna buy myself something nice. I'm gonna go buy myself that pair of sneakers or I'm gonna go to dinner. I'm gonna take my significant other to dinner. We're gonna do something that doesn't have paper napkins. You know, we're gonna do something that's a little bit nicer. I got a little extra money. So the Celtics, if they're able to duck the tax couple, you know, next season without compromising their team, which I again, I want to be clear, I do not think the Celtics would make a decision that hurts their team in order to. To duck the tax. I think the team success comes first. But assuming that they can stay under that tax, now all of a sudden, you aren't taxed at that repeater rate. You're taxed at a normal rate, and you get an extra $500 million from the expansion fee. And now you have all of the tools available to you. No trade restrictions. No. No restrictions as far as signings and all of that stuff. You have whatever exceptions are available to you. You can go out there and just spend and not even worry about it. It's not even your money that you're spending. So, yeah, Brad, go sign that guy. Sign whoever you want. Go for it. It's. It's all good. It's free money. That is an advantage for the Celtics. So a lot of these things are possible. We'll see how it goes. Right now, again, a lot of this is still in the theoretic, theoretical phase, so we're all just kind of guessing, but that's my best guess so far. If you want to read about everything that I just said, it's at Celtics on si. It's four ways that the cell the expansion will impact the Boston Celtics. So if you want a written version that you could share, or you can just share this podcast, you can tell everybody that they should be listening to and watching the lockdown Celtics podcast here in the Lockdown podcast network your team every day.
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Today.