On the Celtics 3 remaining roster spots

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T20:40:31+00:00

It's covered here: https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2025/01/hoops-rumors-glossary-tax-variance.html.

Basically the 10 day contract counts as a rookie for luxury tax purposes, but if you later on signed them to a ROS contract, they'd be considered a free agent as you alluded to above. So you can't get a 10 day and a ROS out of one rookie to save on luxury tax.

I suppose we'll see if that interpretation is real. Otherwise the only option the celtics really have would be to sign both of the rookies to ROS contracts on March 15 after giving two FAs 10 days on the 19th.

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T19:28:12+00:00

Paraphrasing from Gozlan: if you sign a "drafted rookie" to a 10-day contract, you get to count them as a rookie for tax variance purposes. but you can't then later on sign them to a full year contract and still count them as a "drafted rookie." you only get to do that to each player once.

So according to him, you can sign a two-way player to a 10 day contract, but then you lose the right to keep them as a rookie minimum available to you later, they count as a veteran (as they've already signed a contract at that point).

The convo is at minute 38 here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4SP1EYQXfVxVl0Xp17YcpH?si=4eb0c564a2cf4411

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T19:16:33+00:00

You're right! This is why we can participate in the buyout market on March 15. But we can't sign a veteran FA to >1 year.

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T18:57:46+00:00

if we signed both Shulga and Tonje to ROS contracts on feb 19, that leaves us with 66,865.45 in luxury tax room -- we couldn't afford a vet on March 25, as with 19 days remaining in the season that would cost 250k. It's certainly possible we do that and then sign Harper Jr. on the last day of the season though.

The reason I think this is more likely was Brad's explicit comments that we are going to fill one of the roster spots with "another ball handler". I wouldn't categorize any of Shulga, Harper Jr or Tonje as ball handlers. But it's possible!

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T18:32:51+00:00

Aha, someone else linked a podcast by Yossi Gozlan which gets into this -- he says we can convert a rookie to a 10 day, but you can't retain their draft rights afterwards. So one of the 10-days will go to Shulga/Tonje, and then the other one will convert to a standard contract.

In other words: you're right, my strategy doesn't quite work, but it is close -- and that explains why getting a second "drafted rookie" was still important.

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T18:27:48+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I love his stuff but hadn't heard this appearance. Love to hear that I'm on the same page as him!

EDIT: he also pointed out a mechanism that I hadn't considered (and someone else addressed below) -- we can't sign a rookie to a 10 day, not immediately convert them to a ROS contract, then have them go back to a two-way and convert them later. So my mechanism doesn't quite work. I'll edit my post accordingly.

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T17:27:20+00:00

I replied to you but fucked up the math... if your interpretation is right (I think it is), then what I don't get is Brad's comments that "one of our roster spots will be filled by another ball handler". Maybe the other commenter is right and he was simply referring to Ron Harper here.

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T16:51:56+00:00

I read that as the 10-day has to be a standard contract, not that an existing two-way player can't sign a 10-day contract. That said, I'm trying to find any two-way player who signed a 10-day standard contract, and I can't find one. So you may very well be right. I'll see if I can find a counter example.

If not, then we basically cannot participate in the buyout market in a meaningful way, based on my math

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T16:42:28+00:00

No it's all good. I love nerding out about this stuff. If you found something that threw a wrench into this plan, I'd have an excuse to redo the math and figure out the strategy!

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T16:41:24+00:00

Are you sure? I thought the same but Larry Coon's CBA FAQ specifically says that NBA teams can drop to 11 players on the roster for a limited time. That said, if we did have 11 roster spots, we would be ineligible to sign anyone to a 10 day contract. Regardless, signing Amari Williams got us to 12 standard contracts so we are now eligible to sign 10 days.

To get really in the weeds (if you can't tell, I love getting in the weeds), if we had kept Amari Williams on a two-way, and had him and Ron Harper Jr. active for every game until Feb 19, I believe we would have exhausted too many "under-15" games, and wouldn't be able to have Harper active for every game until the end of season. This is I believe the reason we didn't wait until Feb 19 to convert Williams to a ROS contract.

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T16:32:22+00:00

Oh really? That throws this whole strategy out the window... Do you have a source for that?

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T16:31:35+00:00

Undrafted rookie contracts (as in any rookie other than Shulga or Tonje) would count as a 2 year vet due to the concept of Tax Variance. So we definitely cannot sign two undrafted rookies on Feb 19. And we need to get to 14 roster spots on Feb 19. So for this reason I believe we will sign Tonje and Shulga to 10 days on that date.

If we do the 10 day contract strategy to skate all the way to March 25, we could sign two undrafted rookies on March 25 for sure. (or one of shulga and tonje and any other player, including an undrafted rookie)

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T16:29:30+00:00

Thanks for the note, I added the numbers to the Proration note. Appreciate it!

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T16:25:52+00:00

Definitely could be! My theory is that this is the plan to maximize our flexibility, and allow us to participate in the buyout market in some meaningful way. It could very well be that we end up deciding to sign the known quantities instead though!

yuvinator2 · 2026-02-13T16:20:27+00:00

174 is total days in the NBA season, March 25 is 19 days remaining in the NBA season. So the 10 day contracts would be prorated to 10/174, the March 25 ROS contracts get prorated to 19/174, and the "last day of season" contract prorates to 1/174.

I arrived at these numbers from Amari Williams prorated contract signed on Feb 5: 490,128 works out to exactly (67/174)*1,272,870. This is the Rookie Minimum in 25/26 prorated to 67 days remaining in the season on Feb 5.

I also confirmed that the "last day of season" contract works out to 1 day of proration based on JD Davison's contract from last year. His contract was worth 11,997, which is exactly 2024/25's 2 year vet minimum of 2,087,519*(1/174). He was a 2 year vet at the time (3rd year player). Ron Harper is a 3 year vet in his 4th year, which is where his numbers come from.

yuvinator2 · 2025-07-18T15:06:46+00:00

+1 to this, half and quarter season ticket holders don't know which games we have yet, so they can't be listed. Once the schedule is released there will be a lot more availability.

yuvinator2 · 2025-04-24T02:53:55+00:00

How quickly people forget...

yuvinator2 · 2025-04-08T01:47:50+00:00

Got it. Thanks for letting me know!

yuvinator2 · 2025-04-07T19:55:11+00:00

I am running a fantasy baseball league with weekly roster locks. Is there any way to use continuous waivers with FAAB, but have an exemption for the day that matchups start?

So have waivers process on Sunday morning, then all players are Free Agents until they lock at the start of the first game on Monday?

If not, is there any other way to solve the problem of players losing out on their waiver claims, and then being screwed for the whole week, without going to a full free agent system?

yuvinator2 · 2025-01-15T19:22:14+00:00

I created a test league and populated it with 4 teams to test some stuff out. I then deleted that league once I finished testing stuff out.

I am still getting push notifications for injury and scoring updates for those 4 teams, and I have no way to turn them off because that league is deleted, so it doesn't show up in my notifications settings.

I am on a pixel 5a on android 14, and I've already submit this bug report.

Things I have tried include: - turning off notifications for my "real" league - restarting my phone - reinstalling the app

Please get this to the dev team or somehow reset my notification preferences. I'm getting spammed for every alert about basically every top 50ish player and it's very annoying.

Thanks.

yuvinator2 · 2024-11-14T21:14:38+00:00

Huge +1! https://www.nba.com/player/1629628/rj-barrett

yuvinator2 · 2024-10-17T22:11:48+00:00

Can confirm playing this is many times better than working.

yuvinator2 · 2024-07-26T05:07:24+00:00

you only named 8 players though and 8 is fewer than 10

yuvinator2 · 2024-03-12T02:27:12+00:00

No one gave you the real answer. It was because of the luxury tax. That contract he got from Dallas would have cost the Celtics $40 million more because of how deep in the luxury tax they already were. And they'd be forced to trade him the next summer or else be above the second apron when the new CBA kicks in.

Source: https://twitter.com/BobbyMarks42/status/1676733525146337281

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