WITH KLAY IN DALLAS AND HOPE IN PHILLY, THE BOSTON CELTICS ARE FOR … SALE?
The NBA has seen team valuations soar in an imminent new TV era, so the Celtics will seek more green with fresh owners while the 76ers spend for Paul George and the Mavericks need shots from Thompson
Rather than pay $314 million to Jayson Tatum, $286 million to Jaylen Brown, $135 million to Jrue Holiday, $126 million to Derrick White, $60 million to Kristaps Porzingis and far more than Red Auerbach’s cigar ashes to Brad Stevens, the Boston Celtics are for sale. It’s unusual when a championship winner pawns off a majority interest. But then, this is 2024 and NBA valuations are on a higher plane than Joe Biden’s psyche.
Wyc Grousbeck wanted an 18th league title. He has it, and now he wants others to control the franchise — with Grousbeck remaining the team governor until the final sale closes in 2028. He wants to win more greenbacks, as they say. In the manner of Dallas, Phoenix, Milwaukee and Charlotte, the ownership wishes to collect, oh, $6 billion rather than shell out billions when the team was bought for $360 million.
Some New England nutball will buy them. Tom Brady, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, with help from investors? It’s summer time, right?
This is a week when we celebrate Philadelphia. The Declaration of Independence? Nah, another giddy blitz with a forlorn basketball team. The 76ers haven’t won a title in 41 years and probably won’t win another in a conference with the Celtics, but they’ve found a hope keeper in Paul George, who wore a t-shirt paying tribute to Allen Iverson during a meeting with Julius Erving.
Is he also a certified practitioner of medicine for Joel Embiid?
This also is a week when we abuse the Bay Area, which will build a statue for Klay Thompson outside Chase Center but let him sulk away. No longer is he close to his old status as a premier all-time shooter, and rather than cut a sweet twilight deal with his former dynasty mates, he is off to the Dallas Mavericks for $50 million. He said no to LeBron James in Los Angeles, though his father is an analyst for the Lakers. He’d prefer to try another championship run. Stephen Curry can talk about future life as a politician, knowing he won’t be seeing serious postseason action. Turns out Thompson could win a fifth ring when Curry and Draymond Green are left with four.
“I would like to win again. One for the thumb would be nice,” he said. “I still think it’s in reach.”
Can he soothe Luka Doncic? Can he talk life with Kyrie Irving? The Mavericks need Thompson for bursts but can’t suffer his droughts. He is a nice story after devastating surgeries and career-threatening rehabs, but like George, we cross our fingers.
It matters in July 2024 that George is a dependable third scorer who brings three-point shooting and a defensive presence. It will matter more in May 2025 that George is 35, has been to only one conference finals in 10 years, has a losing record (53-61) in the playoffs and can’t help Embiid’s knee problems, ankle woes and thumb issues. Providing he stays healthy himself, he’ll provide measures of intrigue as he joins some version of Embiid and a complete Tyrese Maxey.
“Still UP,” Embiid wrote Monday at 2:04 a.m. ET.
But in the end, will George be any different than James Harden, Ben Simmons and Jimmy Butler as he dissolves in Embiid’s vital fluids? Does it matter that Daryl Morey, still trying to win something after so many years and Hong Kong commentaries, will pay his new trio almost $136 million next season? George would have preferred staying in Los Angeles, but the owner with the wondrous new arena, Steve Ballmer, decided to offer a three-year extension when George wanted four. Thus, he accepts a $212 million contract before the opening of the Intuit Dome, where the Clippers extended a barely-playing Kawhi Leonard and a waning Harden — who still has his beard! — and expect 5,000 people to sit in 51 uninterrupted rows of baseline seats to form The Wall. Leonard will be available for the Summer Olympics, which means his load management suffers starting in October.
Poor Ballmer. Should he have moved the Clippers to Seattle? He tried to contend with George, Leonard and Harden when all of us said it wouldn’t work. Now he loses George while getting nothing in return, even in a proposed deal with another payroll-cutting rich team, the Golden State Warriors. Couldn’t Joe Lacob have offered more to Thompson than $50 million? Balmer’s explanation is more lengthy than his role in “Clipped,” the Hulu program that details how he took over the franchise from deranged Donald Sterling.
“We feel lucky for the five years we have spent together. Though we have fallen short of our ultimate goal, we appreciate the opportunity Paul gave us,” the team wrote. “We had three players over 33 years old who could become free agents. We wanted to retain them with contracts that would allow us to continue growing under rules of the current collective agreement. We negotiated for months with Paul and his agents to reach an agreement that works for both parties. However, the distance between the two was important. We understand and respect Paul’s decision regarding his upcoming contract. We explored the possibility of him exercising his player option to seek a transfer, but he left us in a bad position with respect to the collective agreement and its restrictions.”
A bad position, the statement said. Such is life in L.A. basketball, where the Lakers are stuck with LeBron and Bronny and the Clippers have the best arena pretzels ever made in Austria. The Denver Nuggets suffered another hit when Kentavious Caldwell-Pope joined Orlando for $66 million. Have you noticed a bulk-up of the Eastern Conference, with the Sixers adding George, the Knicks adding Mikal Bridges and signing OG Anunoby, and the Magic inking a key two-way player? “We’ll have to work with that,” said Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth, who might be throwing a heat pack and a towel on the team’s title hopes.
The association is about a potential Celtics dynasty — no matter who owns them — and whether the Sixers or Knicks threaten Boston on the seaboard. In the Western Conference, the master board includes Dallas, Minnesota and Oklahoma City. I won’t fail to mention the addition of a point guard who isn’t quite a point god. He has played for seven teams. He is third all-time in league assists. He’ll never win a championship.
But Chris Paul feeds the ball to Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio.
We’ll rejoice in that, too, for now.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.