Can the C’s afford to keep Hauser long-term? Salary cap expert first appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Sam Houser will return to the Boston Celtics next season, but the sharpshooter’s long-term future with the team remains uncertain.
The Celtics exercised Houser’s $2.1 million team option on Saturday. Boston is expected to begin contract extension talks with the 26-year-old forward when he becomes eligible for an extension on July 9, according to Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe. He is eligible for up to a four-year, $78 million contract.
If the two sides can’t come to an agreement, Houser will become an unrestricted free agent next summer. Keeping him long-term could be tricky with the NBA’s new luxury tax rules, so our Chris Forsberg invited salary cap expert Ryan Bernardoni to discuss the financial implications of signing Houser to a massive contract on the latest episode of the Celtics Talk podcast.
🔊 Celtics Talk: Breaking down the numbers for the Celtics’ elite roster with cap expert Ryan Bernardoni Listen & Subscribe | Watch on YouTube
“If you add Sam Houser, who I think is going to make $10 million-plus next year … it’s $82 million a year to add Sam Houser to that starting position,” Bernardoni explained. “If Al Horford wants to come back for the minimum, great. If he wants more than that or he retires and wants to replace him — and again, we’re talking about the minimum because of the apron. But if you’re talking about the $2.5 million minimum — $2.5 million x 7 — you’re talking about a $20 million minimum player to fill out the roster. So that $150 million very quickly goes into the high $200 million range, even with the minimum.
“If you’re talking about Houser, you’re talking about $300 million in one-year luxury tax, and potentially rolling that over another year. So it’s hard to see them continuing to pay all that unless the ownership group comes in and says, ‘If we’re going to pay $5 billion to the team anyway, what’s the difference if we pay $6 billion?’ And that would be unprecedented in the history of the league, not just in dollars, but also in the luxury tax as a percentage of the salary cap, which is probably the most important thing.
“… when you start talking about a $330 million luxury tax, it’s on a scale that’s incomparable to anything that’s ever happened. So you look at that and you say, it’s probably not going to happen.”
This episode also includes:
