This is mostly for the cap nerds and super premature to discuss trading a guy who hasn't even made his Celtic debut yet, but I always like to think about the big picture and given there's already plenty of talk about eventually "flipping" Paul George as an expiring, I thought it would be mildly interesting to discuss the idea of trading MItchell Robinson.
Say sometime between December-Feb the team ultimately decides Sam Hauser and Mitchell Robinson are expendable. In Sam's case, maybe because you got guys like Baylor, Walsh and Hugo eating his minutes. In Robinson's case, maybe Amari Williams or Chris Cenac is showing signs and you're thinking Queta and Garza can hold it down. Or maybe, you're just thinking "both of these guys are good, but not untouchable in the grand scheme of things"
Hauser ($10,848,215) + Robinson ($15,044,000) = $25,892,215
As of December 15th, Boston would be able to trade them together and as as a non apron team sending out under 29 mil, they'd be able to take back $125% + $250k This means that technically they could take back as much as 33.39 mil in a trade and stay under the 1st apron.
However, even though they are sitting 10.2 mil under the first apron, they'd be super unlikely to take on an additional 7.5 mil in salary, because it would push them into the tax. Boston is currently only $1,705,594 under the luxury tax and more than likely will not cross that line this season.
That said, it also means that if Boston were to trade those two guys, they'd be able to take back another 1.7 mi ($27,597,809 total), but the sight catch is they'd still need to have money available to fill the empty roster spot with a min contract ($1,357,763). For instance, converting Amari Williams or Dillion Mitchell. This is prorated so essentially if they signed one on December 15th, it's gonna be a $920,782 hit (can only take back $26,677,027 in a Hauser/Robinson trade). If they waited until Feb 5th to make a trade, they could stretch it out a bit longer with a 14 day grace period of holding only 14 roster spots and then sign a min guy on Feb 19th for $405,768... essentially meaning Boston could take back $27,192,041 in a Hauser/Robinson trade on Feb 5th.
Why is that mildly interesting and why Feb 5th instead of the Feb 11th trade deadline?
Well, because on Feb 5th 2026, we traded Anfernee Simons for Nikola Vucevic and as part of that deal we generated that 27.6 mil TPE we have until Feb 5th 2027 to use. That also means we could make a deal, use the TPE to absorb salary, and generate new TPEs with a new 1 year expiration clock.
So to give you a hypothetical example:
- Feb 5th 2027: Boston trades Hauser (10.8 mil) + Robinson (15 mil) along with picks (not including the Clippers 1st) for a total of 25.9 mil outgoing to the Pelicans for Trey Murphy III (27 mil incoming)
- Pelicans are already 4 mil under luxury tax, but in this case they are sending out more salary (27 mil) than they are receiving (25.9 mil), so from their perspective this deal works fine from a cap standpoint.
- However, Boston actually utilizes their Simons 27.6 mil TPE to absorb the incoming Trey Murphy salary. In the process, because the TPE is used to absorb Murphy, Boston then generates a 10.8 mil TPE (via Hauser) and 15 mil TPE (via Robinson) Boston would have a year to use. This hypothetically could prove important as they target 2027-28 season as the year they push back into the aprons.
- This still leaves Boston with enough luxury tax space (roughly 597.8k) to convert Amari Williams to a min contract (515k prorated on Feb 5th or 405k prorated on Feb 19th) and remain under the luxury tax.
...
To expand on the example above a bit, while I know there's hope from fans that next Summer we'll move Paul George's expiring + the Clippers 1st for the next available star, it's unclear who that is. Jokic isn't happening. Booker? Apron-fearing Knicks moving Karl Towns would be funny in the same way Brown to Philly was hilarious. More likely, I think we just have a great season and then convince Paul George to opt out of his final year (56.5 mil) to instead sign a guaranteed 3 year deal paying him something like 80 mil. That would put his 2027-28 salary at around 25.1 mil. 2028 draft class might be great so I could see us just hanging onto the Clippers pick.
Boston could then be looking at a 2027-28 roster of: Tatum (62.7 mil), George (25.1 mil), White (32.6 mil), Murphy (29 mil), Queta (12 mil), Pritchard (8.3 mil), Harper (3.3 mil), Cenac (3.1 mil), Hugo (3 mil), Baylor (4.9 mil), Walsh (5 mil), Amari (2.6 mil), Boston 2027 1st rounder around 25th pick assuming it wasn't included in the Murphy trade (3.4 mil) = 13 players under contract for 195 mil total. They need a minimum of 14, but could go as high as 15. At this point, Boston is ready to spend money to get up into apron territory. They'd still remain under the luxury line (around 213 mil) and 1st apron (222 mil). So they could then utilize those two TPEs (10.8 Hauser TPE and 15 mil Robinson TPE) to find a couple more key players and still stay under the 1st apron hard cap. Purely as an example, sending a pick to the Blazers to take Rob Williams' 14.5 mil and using the Mitchell TPE to absorb his salary, then sending a pick to take on another guy making under 10 (Marcus Smart, Luke Kornet, Bradley Beal, Al Horford as examples) using the Hauser TPE to absorb their money. Even using the full TPEs, the Hypothetical 15 man roster comes in just under the 1st apron at 220.8 mil.
Assuming they did all of that while keeping the 2028 Clippers 1st, Summer 2028 would also be spicy.
TL;DR: Some cap ideas to think about over the next 12 months of team building