The Boston Celtics’ ownership change is officially completed with Bill Chisholm as the owner and governor — after purchasing the majority of the team at a $6.1 billion valuation — and Wyc Grousbeck serving as the alternate governor. While ownership has changed, the goals or expectations in Boston have not, Chisholm told Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe.
“We’re not playing for second, we’re playing for championships and banners,” Chisholm said. “We’re playing for them in the near term, although we obviously had to do some things to get below the second apron. But we’re also playing for them in the medium and long term. The second apron means you can’t do it by just throwing money at the problem. You have to do it with talent, you have to do it with leadership, and with Wyc and with (president of basketball operations Brad Stevens) and (president Rich Gotham) and (coach Joe Mazzulla), I feel like we have the best leaders in the league.”
This offseason, the Celtics have shed the salaries of Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, saving the team more than $300 million in salary and luxury tax. All their moves combined got them below the dreaded second apron of the luxury tax, but they are still in the tax. While the sense around the league has been Boston may treat this as a “gap year” due to Jayson Tatum’s torn Achilles keeping him out most or all of next season — and some think they may not be done looking for moves to save money — Chisholm said he thought a team based around Jaylen Brown and Derrick White could surprise some people.
He also discussed Grousbeck’s role with the team. The plan had been to have Grousbeck stay on as the team’s governor, but the league requires the governor to have a 15% stake in the team, and after the sale, the Grousbecks fell slightly below that threshold. That doesn’t really change anything, Grousbeck said.
“When it became clear the governor title was not going to be available because of technical reasons, because of math, Bill said, ‘Well, then we’re just not going to use that word around the office.’ So that says a lot about Bill, that he doesn’t care,” Grousbeck said. “He just wants to do the right thing for the team, and I feel the exact same way. We’re shoulder to shoulder.”
The real test of ownership and the creativity of management will come next summer as they try to fill out a championship roster around a returned Tatum, plus Brown and company. That’s when the spending will matter more.
For now though, Chisholm is singing a song that Celtics fans will like to hear.