For those among us hoping for news of a player being traded into the Boston Celtics’ Evan Fournier traded player exception (TPE), Monday will be a bit of a disappointment with new reporting from Boston Sports Journal’s John Karalis relating that the $17.1 million TPE generated by Fournier’s sign and trade to the New York Knicks about a year ago will go unused.
Per Karalis, he is hearing “nothing good enough came along” to use the exception on for the Celtics, who will let it expire instead. The TPE would have allowed Boston to bring a player or players into their roster earning up to $17.2 million total in salary this coming 2022-23 season, but the cost to do so would have been steep given the Celtics would dive deep into luxury tax territory as a result of such a move.
The presumptive ask of teams with players Boston might want to add combined with the depth the team already managed to put together likely made such a deal unpalatable to the team’s front office.
After adding Danilo Gallinari and Malcolm Brogdon to last season’s finals runner-up can’t be far if not in the lead. https://t.co/grZ8QWNdlf
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) July 18, 2022
With two more substantial TPEs at their disposal that won’t expire until the trade deadline close to the mini-midlevel exception salary of $6.5 million, the Celtics are still in a position to add a player via trade without sending back salary.
But with so much depth and the roster cost associated with that depth, it seems more likely that at least some salary would be going out, particularly once any of the depth players Boston will likely add in the coming days and week to fill out the last of their open roster slots have been with the team long enough to be traded in December.
This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire.
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