The Celtics’ new ownership group wasted little time trying to cool the temperature around the Jaylen Brown-for-Paul George blockbuster. On Monday afternoon, once the trade became official, president Brad Stevens and owner Bill Chisholm met with the media and made the same point over and over: this was not a money-driven order from above.
That mattered because plenty of the reaction around the deal had centered on ownership, not just basketball. Since Chisholm’s group, partially funded by private equity, took over, there has been a growing suspicion that the Celtics might care more about trimming costs than chasing banners. Stevens and Chisholm pushed back hard on that idea.
When asked directly whether there was any financial mandate attached to the move, Chisholm didn’t flinch.
"No, absolutely not… I think we have the best front office in the NBA, and they put in their work, and they came to the conclusion this was the best way for us to win, and that's the mandate: Is to win. And I just have to keep saying that there is no -we'll spend whatever it takes to do that. The mandate is to win.”
Chisholm also addressed the exits of Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, Jrue Holiday, and others during his ownership tenure before Brown, and he framed every one of those decisions through the same lens: basketball, not bookkeeping.
“It’s not about the money at all…This was, again, try to put together the right set of players and assets to win now, to win next year, the following year, and the year after that.”
Stevens leaned into the same broader reality. He pointed to optionality, the CBA, and the second apron as the forces shaping roster building now, especially with Jayson Tatum and Brown on supermax deals that take up 70% of the salary cap. In other words, the Celtics were operating in a landscape where tough choices were coming whether ownership liked it or not.
The luxury tax came up too, along with whether the Celtics plan to duck it again. Stevens and Chisholm didn’t pin themselves to a hard answer, but they made clear there is no directive to get below the tax if doing so would hurt the team. If a move helps them win, they’ll make it.
Chisholm also acknowledged that the optics are not exactly clean, but said the franchise needed a financial reset to rebuild a juggernaut around Tatum. He said Stevens has the green light to spend when he sees fit.
That leaves the obvious question hanging in the air: whether the Celtics are setting up a reset now so they can go all-in later. Nobody answered that directly. But Chisholm’s insistence that the team will spend whatever it takes, along with the repeated talk of optionality, was clearly meant to steady the fan base.
For now, the message from ownership is simple. The Celtics are not putting a cap on ambition, and nothing they’ve done so far should be read as a change in philosophy from the previous regime.
The moves after the 2023 season were tied to a short championship window, and the team got one. A reset was always coming.
The only thing that changed was the sale, not the goal.
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