The Boston Celtics have become pioneers in the art of juggling traded player exceptions (TPEs) in recent years in order to maintain cap flexibility and manage their overall luxury tax burden, deftly using second-round draft picks to allow the franchise to add or deal away players as needed.
The team currently possesses three such TPEs of note on top of two smaller ones (for $500,000 from the Moses Brown trade and for $370,564 from the Jeff Teague trade) which are unlikely to be used given that such exceptions are the space into which a team completes a non-simultaneous trade. That means any player incoming will need to make no more than $100,000 above the dollar amount in each TPE, which cannot be combined or added to otherwise.
Apart from those details, Boston has TPEs for $17.1 million from the Evan Fournier trade, $9.7 million from the Tristan Thompson deal, and just over $5 million left from the Kemba Walker trade expiring July 18, July 7 and May 17 respectively. Today, we’ll look at some of our favorite options the Celtics could trade for with the Walker TPE.
Two of them shouldn’t surprise, but the third might raise an eyebrow among his perennial doubters. https://t.co/qdgnh8egFp
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) September 17, 2021