By moving a few players around in the hours leading up to the NBA trade deadline, Brad Stevens and the Celtics’ front office did most of the heavy lifting for the season, and accomplished the biggest and most challenging goal: getting out of the luxury tax.
The fact that they were able to achieve that without trading away meaningful assets or making the team meaningfully worse (it’s debatable whether swapping Anfernee Simons for Nikola Vucevic was an upgrade or not) is very impressive, but the work isn’t completely done.
NBA rules dictate that teams can’t carry fewer than 14 players on their active roster for more than 14 consecutive days.