Can the C’s afford to keep Hauser long-term? Salary cap guru weighs in originally appeared in NBC Sports Boston
Sam Hauser will be back with the Boston Celtics next season. The shooter’s future with the team, however, remains uncertain.
The Celts exercised Hauser’s $2.1 million team option on Saturday. According to Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe, Boston is expected to begin negotiating a contract extension with the 26-year-old forward when he becomes extension eligible on July 9. He could earn up to four years worth $78 million.
If the two sides cannot reach an agreement, Hauser 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 joined salary cap expert Ryan Bernardoni on the latest episode of the Celtics Talk Podcast to discuss the financial implications of signing a hefty contract. with Hauser.
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“If you add Sam Hauser, who I think is going to make over $10 million next year…it’s a one-year, $82 million commitment to add Sam Hauser to that starting position,” Bernardoni explained. “If Al Horford wants to come back with the minimum, great. If he wants an amount more than that or if he retires and you want to replace him with someone else – and again, because of the apron, you’re talking about minimums. But if you’re talking about $2.5 million minimums – $2.5 million x 7 – you’re talking about guys who are $20 million minimum players just to fill out your roster. And then that $150 million very quickly, even hiring the minimum. personal, it reaches US$ 200 million.
“If you’re talking about Hauser, you’re talking about $300 and something like millions of dollars in luxury taxes for a single year and potentially that carrying over another year. So prohibiting an ownership group from coming in and saying, ‘Listen, if we’re going to pay $5 billion for the team anyway, what difference does it make if we pay $6 billion?’ It’s hard to see them continue and pay for all of this. And it would certainly be unprecedented for anyone in league history, not just in raw dollars but also in what probably matters most, which is the luxury tax as a percentage of the salary cap.
“…Once you’re talking about a $330 million luxury tax, it’s out of scale with everything that’s ever happened before, and that’s why you look at it and say, it’s probably not going to happen .”
Also in the episode:
