TheThe last three teams to win NBA championships have all been eliminated early in the 2025 Playoffs. Joining them is a top-seeded title favorite, who despite their improvements and massive spending, only managed one win in the second round.
Apart from not meeting their title aspirations, they will now join several other teams in dealing with the dreaded tax aprons that threaten to force major changes. So where do the Celtics, Warriors, Nuggets and Cavs go from here?
Do they start a complete rebuild? Reload and try again? Somewhere in the middle? That’s what we’ll try to figure out as we chart the biggest issues and likely next steps for every NBA team that faced an early exit.
This offseason promises to be chaotic, and a lot of the big moves could begin with the deepest team in the league hitting the reset button.
Boston Celtics
61-21 season, No. 2 seed in East, lost 4-2 to Knicks
Under contract: Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Derrick White, Sam Hauser, Payton Pritchard, Baylor Scheierman, Xavier Tillman
Non-Guaranteed: Neemias Queta, Jordan Walsh
Team option: J.D. Davison
Two-way: Miles Norris
Free agents: Al Horford, Luke Kornet, Torrey Craig
Current team salary: $227 million, according to Salary Swish
Projected salary cap space: Around $74 million over the cap, $20 million over the Second Apron
Next moves: Gap year? Major pieces likely to go.
Even before the NBA Playoffs started, there were reasons people thought this would be the Celtics’ final run with this current core. Saying that about a team that just won the NBA championship a year ago would’ve been unheard of in previous eras, but the current CBA just doesn’t make long runs as sustainable.
The Celtics have new ownership that just purchased the team for $6.1 billion, the highest price for a US franchise ever. Apart from already having the highest player salary in the league, they’re more than likely to have well over double that amount in taxes, projecting to make them the most expensive roster in NBA history.
The Celtics have been classified as a repeat tax offender, meaning they’ll face harsher penalties after going over the tax threshold in at least three of the last four years. Even if they renounce their key free agents like Horford and Kornet, the Celtics are still facing a luxury tax hit of at least $238 million. For context, that low tax estimate alone is already $24 million more than the most expensive NBA team salary this past season. That tax can also go well over $263 million after signing their upcoming draft picks, as next season’s increased penalties can go as high as $5.5 million to $6.75 million for every additional $1 million in salary.
They were already facing all those issues prior to the Playoffs, and Jayson Tatum’s achilles injury may have just been the final nail on the coffin for this core. They’re still a decent playoff team without Tatum, but ownership will not pay $500 million in combined salary and taxes for what is essentially a gap year.
Celtics could lose free agents like Horford, and also trade away key players like Kristaps Porzingis ($30.7 million), Jrue Holiday ($32 million) and Sam Hauser ($10 million) to save money. Moving Jaylen Brown, the Finals MVP a year ago, is also thought to be on the table as well during this gap year, as they could potentially look to do a complete reset around Tatum and possibly White for the 2026-2027 season.
As it stands, the Celtics are pretty much hard-capped, and can’t aggregate contracts or take more money in a trade. They can’t send out cash as a sweetener for salary dumps, nor can they even use their mid-level exception. With only a few NBA teams with cap space, they will also have to take in some salary in return, making any cost-cutting trades a tad more complicated on top of the previously mentioned restrictions.
The silver lining for the Celtics is that their talented players will have suitors and are relatively easier to move, and they also control their first round picks in five of the next seven years. Should they be able to get their tax situation under control and get more draft assets in return, they could still be in a good (enough) position two seasons from now.
Denver Nuggets
50-32 season, lost 4-3 to Thunder
Under contract: Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon, Zeke Nnaji, Christian Braun, Peyton Watson, DaRon Holmes II, Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett, Hunter Tyson
Player option: Dario Saric, Russell Westbrook
Free agents: DeAndre Jordan, Vlatko Cancar
Current team salary: $199.5 million according to Salary Swish
Projected salary cap space: From $37 million to $44.8 million over the cap, already over the first apron
Next moves: Get a new GM, start major rebuild around Jokic?
If there’s a perfect example of just how difficult it is to maintain a championship roster and extend your title window during this tax apron era, it’s the Denver Nuggets. After winning their first NBA title in 2023, CBA issues led to them losing key role players each year in Bruce Brown (2023) and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (2024).
Nikola Jokic may still be the best basketball player on the planet, but their lack of depth around him has never been more glaring than it is now. There’s no shame in losing to the top-seeded Thunder in seven games, but things just don’t seem to be sustainable with the injury-riddled and expensive core around Jokic, and more tax issues to come.
The Nuggets’ roster is very top-heavy, with Jokic ($55 million), Murray ($46 million), Porter ($38 million) and Gordon ($23 million) alone already putting them over the cap. Murray and Porter both have max deals, while Gordon’s extension will also bump him up to $32 million in the 2026-2027 season, when he turns 31. Like the Celtics, they’re also a repeat tax offender, with extreme penalties on their spending.
That supporting cast certainly earned those paydays after winning the title, but at least a couple of them have either been banged up or underperformed in relation to their star-player-level salary in recent years.
Porter, who is still just 26, is the most logical candidate for a trade after his playoff struggles, but Gordon and Murray shouldn’t be untouchable either. As noted earlier, there will be superstars in the trade market and teams like the Celtics are likely to give up a lot of quality players. The Nuggets don’t necessarily need to find equivalent max-level talent for their players though, as they can also benefit by getting multiple cheaper role players to bolster their depth instead.
Jokic is a generational talent in his prime, and they should really do everything to maximize that window. Without touching their core, though, the Nuggets will have to settle for minimum contracts again, which doesn’t seem ideal if they want to get back to the NBA Finals.
Another wrinkle into these plans is that the Nuggets, who shockingly fired both their coach and GM before the playoffs, will still have to hire a new GM before they can even start making offseason moves. Early reports suggest interim GM Ben Tenzer will just get promoted, but he or whoever takes that seat will immediately have difficult decisions to make.
