Can C’s Afford to Keep Hauser Long-Term? Salary Cap Guru Weighs In originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Sam Hauser will return to the Boston Celtics next season, but the sharpshooter’s long-term future with the team is uncertain.
The Celtics 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 eligible for an extension on July 9. He will be eligible to earn a four-year, $78 million contract.
If the two sides can’t 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 sat down with salary cap expert Ryan Bernardoni on the latest episode of the Celtics Talk Podcast to discuss the financial implications of signing Hauser to a hefty contract.
🔊 Celtics Conversation: Breaking down the numbers on Celtics’ elite roster with cap guru Ryan Bernardoni Listen & Subscribe | Watch on YouTube
“When you add Sam Hauser, who I think is going to make over $10 million next year … it’s an $82 million, one-year commitment to add Sam Hauser to that starting position,” Bernardoni explained. “If Al Horford wants to come back at a minimum, great. If he wants to go a little bit higher or he retires and you want to replace him with someone else — and again, because of the apron, you’re talking about minimums. But when 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 your roster. And so that $150 million very quickly, even by signing minimum guys, it goes up to the high $200 million.
“When you’re talking about Hauser, you’re talking about $300-something million dollars in luxury taxes for a year and then potentially rolling that over for a year. So unless an ownership group comes in and says, ‘Look, if we’re going to pay $5 billion for the team, what difference does it make if we pay $6 billion?’ it’s hard to imagine that they would go ahead and pay all that money. And it would certainly be unprecedented for anyone in the history of the league, not just in pure dollars, but probably most importantly, which is luxury taxes as a percentage of the salary cap.
“… When you’re talking about a $330 million luxury tax, that’s unlike anything that’s ever happened before. So you think, ‘That’s probably not going to happen.'”
Also in the episode:
