Jrue Holiday hoping to remain with Celtics entering uncertain offseason (2025)

Celtics

"We still have a really, really great opportunity and a great window to be successful and win a championship again."

By Conor Roche

May 17, 2025

3 minutes to read

Jrue Holiday has been one of the more popular speculated trade candidates for the Celtics this offseason as they’ll likely set out to cut salary this summer. If he had his say, though, Holiday would like to remain in Boston.

The Celtics guard expressed a desire to stay with his current team when he met with reporters for exit interviews on Saturday, believing that Boston is better than what it showed in its second-round exit this postseason.

“We still have a really, really great opportunity and a great window to be successful and win a championship again,” Holiday told reporters. “I think the talent that we have on this team, not only on the court, but the coaching staff all the way up to (Celtics president of basketball operations) Brad [Stevens], has been amazing. So, the opportunity to win is now, and I still want to be a part of that.”

Holiday, who’ll turn 35 in June, was one of the key pieces for the Celtics in their run to a title in 2024 and is arguably one of the more well-rounded guards in the league. He averaged 11.1 points, 4.3 rebounds, 3.9 assists, and 1.1 steals in 30.6 minutes per game during the 2024-25 regular season. He also likely would’ve been a candidate to be named to an NBA All-Defense team for the seventh time in his career had he met the 65-game threshold, falling short of that mark by three contests.

However, Holiday’s contract could be too much for the Celtics to handle moving forward. He’s set to enter the second year of a four-year, $135 million deal next season, holding a $32.4 million cap hit. NBA executives have viewed Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis as the two most likely players the team would trade in order to help shed salary,The Stein Line’s Jake Fischer reported back in March.

The Celtics will almost certainly have to make a trade this offseason to get off salary unless they want to pay an exuberant payroll and face further penalties for being above the NBA’s second luxury tax apron. The Celtics already have $464 million committed in payroll next season in salaries and repeat luxury tax penalties, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks.That number doesn’t factor in the potential re-signings of Al Horford or Luke Kornet. If Boston re-signed those players on minimum salaries and signed their draft picks to guaranteed NBA contracts, their payroll for 2025 will exceed $500 million, Marks added.

If the Celtics remain in the second apron, they’ll only be able to sign players via the veteran’s minimum. They also won’t be able to aggregate salaries in a trade for a player with a larger salary and won’t be able to trade their 2033 first-round pick. Boston is already unable to trade its 2032 first-round pick.

Holiday is among the handful of Celtics who seemed resigned to the fact that changes are going to be made this offseason, but he isn’t going to sweat over it.

“For me, offseason, having a little bit of a break, getting back right and preparing for next season is all that I can really do,” Holiday said. “Who comes back, roster changes, things like that, it’s not really in my control. So I just focus on what I can.”

Considering the likely shakeup to their core this offseason, it felt like the 2025 postseason might be the last time that the Celtics were one of the top few favorites to win the title in the immediate future. Jayson Tatum’s Achilles injury likely only added to that belief, with the Celtics’ top star likely to miss most of next season, if not all of it.

Even though the Celtics lost Tatum to injury in Game 4 in the series, Holiday admitted that the six-game series loss to the Knicks was a “lost opportunity” following a 61-win regular season.

“I think that we had the best team in the league. Obviously, doing it last year, but the chemistry that we had, that we built from last season,” Holiday said. “Even coming into this postseason and how we were feeling. I feel like we are disappointed in ourselves. We felt like we let the organization down and the city down.”