Kristaps Porzingis and the Boston Celtics have agreed to a two-year, $60 million extensions. Porzingis picked up his $36 million player option earlier this month for next season in order to facilitate his trade to the Celtics; the extension will keep him in Boston until 2026.
Porzingis was traded to the Celtics from the Washington Wizards in a three-team deal, which also sent Marcus Smart to the Memphis Grizzlies and Tyus Jones to the Washington Wizards, in addition to a number of draft picks. Porzingis played 65 games and averaged 23.2 points, 8.4 rebounds and 1.5 blocks, while shooting 38.5% from 3-point land.
Celtics president Brad Stevens said: “I said this at the start of the summer: I thought that we needed to balance our roster and make sure that we looked at the best ways to do that. And that meant that we were going to likely lose a really, really, really good player … From our standpoint, we just looked at it as, What’s our best opportunity to continue to grow and improve as a team? Knowing that sometimes really, really hard decisions have to be made. Like I said, not only adding Kristaps with his skill, his size and the positional versatility, we just had many more numbers and options at the smaller positions than we did at the bigs, especially as we look forward too.”
Porziņgis said: “I don’t know if I’ll be ready. You know? Who knows? But, I’m gonna do everything I can to help this team. I just have a taste of it, right? I have a taste of it and I know what it’s like. And the first playoff series were really good, just didn’t have luck. And the second one was, it was a different style, a different kind. And each series is completely different, so I’m gonna have to be ready for any kind of scenario.”
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