The Celtics offered Grant Williams the $8.5-million qualifying offer on Thursday, according to The Athletic, making Williams a restricted free agent when negotiating begins at 6 p.m. on Friday. The routine process gives Boston the right to match any offer sheet until 11:59 on July 7 after the moratorium ends, and maintains the team’s ability to reach an agreement with Williams themselves.
The Boston Globe first reported the Kristaps Porziņģis trade marked the end of Williams’ time in Boston and it is not difficult to see why. Williams played sparingly last year under Joe Mazzulla, even considering his March hand injury that resulted in surgery. Adding Porziņģis to that mix alongside Al Horford and Robert Williams III further limits and potentially eliminates any playing time for Williams. The Porziņģis trade also pushed the Celtics within $7.3-million of the second apron, a threshold signing Williams to any feasible contract would push Boston above. That doesn’t matter as much as the team’s commitment to Williams, who would receive a one-year no trade clause if Boston decides to match an offer sheet.
The developing free agent market makes it likely Williams will receive at least the full mid-level exception for the first year of his contract, worth $12.4-million, available to teams above the salary cap, but below the luxury tax threshold. Teams that sign that contract, or any portion of the total, become hard-capped at the first apron for the first season of the deal — $172 million this season. Those teams include:
It’s worth noting the Celtics cannot offer their own MLE, given their team sits above the first apron already, and their $5-million MLE (likely too low anyway) would trigger a disruptive hard cap at the second apron. Boston can only use its Bird Rights, allow them to pay or match a broad array of Williams offers while above the cap. Almost any realistic offer would thrust the Celtics above the second apron, eliminating their ability to use the MLE this year, narrowing their salary matching abilities in trades, freezing their 2031 first-round pick and likely bumping it to the end of that first round, among other penalties in the new CBA.
Boston may decide, as I wrote recently, to acquire a trade exception (TPE) in a Williams sign-and-trade to retain flexibility and delay their inevitable move above the second apron line by one year. That would not be in tandem with the teams above, many of them above the salary cap, or committing that cap elsewhere. That would be the case with the teams below, who could sign Williams outright into their cap space.
The difficulty with the TPE plan becomes the new CBA wrinkle, announced yesterday, that limits a team from carrying that TPE over to next season. Before, if you acquired one in July, you’d have it until next July. Now, it expires before the league year ends, so the Celtics would become a second apron team this year regardless.
That creates some incentive to take some money back, or even simply retain Williams as that long-term salary and a depth option at the forward position. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday in Foxboro, Williams expressed interest in staying with the Celtics. He’d be better than any mid-level signing the team could acquire anyway, the Celtics reportedly previously offered the mid-level and the final CBA showed some mercy to teams that leap above the second apron, then quickly dip below in terms of the draft picks falling to the end of the first round.
I’d still bet on Williams playing elsewhere next year, but both the CBA and drying cap space opportunities around the league limit his ability to earn more than $12 million annually.
“(I’d) absolutely (return),” Williams said. “It’s just a matter of the decision of whether or not it’s needed.”
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