Former Celtics Guard Could Give Boston Relief From CBA Penalties

The Boston Celtics are facing a payroll crunch due to the salaries on the books and the new collective bargaining agreement rules regarding team spending.

The Celtics are in the second apron salary-wise, which means that there are intense restrictions on what kind of trades can be made, and the team cannot even access the taxpayer midlevel exception, which limits the team in free agency as well.

These restrictions can limit team-building substantially, which means it is imperative for teams to stay out of the threshold unless they are committed to winning now and trying to capitalize on a short window of success.

More Boston Celtics News: 5 Changes the Celtics Need to Make in Offseason

Now that Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum is set to spend the rest of this upcoming season on the sidelines due to an Achilles tear, the team will surely be looking to shed as much salary as possible.

The ideal players to try to trade are aging veterans on a big money and the Celtics have plenty of those kinds of contracts on the books.

The most glaring contract on the roster the big-money expiring deal of Kristaps Porzingis, which will need to be urgently shopped around the league.

Brian Robb, reporter for Mass Live, had a mailbag story this weekend where he answered questions from readers, one of which posed a deal of trading Porzingis to the Washington Wizards for guard Marcus Smart.

"Porzingis for Smart makes plenty of sense for the Celtics but why do the Wizards do it without incentive? They are adding payroll. Unless they think they can sell off Porzingis for something elsewhere, they will need a sweetener to make that deal," Robb wrote in response to the trade idea.

There are some picks that the Celtics could throw in the deal with the Wizards if the organization really needs to make the trade due to low demand on the trade market.

The trade would see Smart return to the Celtics, the team that drafted him and that he called home for several seasons that included deep playoff runs.