I suspect any Celtics interest in Irving would be connected with their ability to sign IT long term to a max. Or their inability, I should say. They will have a tough time adding a 3rd star to a max contract. Irving has a friendlier contract. What is it? $18-20M per for the next 2 or 3 years.They would have an easier time fitting Irving under or near the cap than IT.
Let's be clear, even if we give IT an absolute max-value, full 5-year contract, Irving will cost more over the next 6 years.
In fact, he will cost more in 5 of the 6 years. And he will cost more in total just to cover the next two years.
Irving would be only be cheaper in year 2 from now (the year IT would be in the first year of his new contract). Because after that, then Irving would jump back up above him in cost with his _own_ new max contract.
So can we please stop with the "friendlier contract" mythology? Irving's contract doesn't present any real-world advantage over Thomas'. In either case, we will be over the cap from now on. In either case we will go over the tax in year 2. The only difference is that we'd be over by a lesser amount in year 2 but then over by a lot more in subsequent years.
I think people see Irving as a more legitimate max-level player than IT due to his age and height advantage. The team-friendly terminology also refers to next year when we are going to plow through the tax penalty by a wide margin. Having Irving instead of a $30M+ IT would allow an extra year to work through the logistics. Heck, even Horford will be eligible to opt out of his contract after that year. It also may allow us to keep Smart.
Whether Irving is "a more legitimate max-level player than IT" is a completely separate discussion and definitely a debatable assertion.
As I said, the only difference is in how much over the tax threshold we go in 2018-19. This is _not_ going to effect whether we sign Smart or not. If Wyc is not willing to go into the tax to sign Smart, then the fact that he'd have less tax penalty for doing so for one year isn't going to affect that decision. Because he'd still have to pay it on the years going forward.
Horford, at his age is almost certainly not going to opt out of his contract in '19-20. So we will be over the tax threshold that year whether with IT on the second year of his new contract or with Irving on the first year of an even more expensive new contract.
The first chance to drop back below the tax threshold would be 2020-21, after Horford's contract expires. But you also have to re-sign Jaylen that year and if you just signed Irving to a new contract your margin is reduced by how much more he makes than Thomas would have been making. If another team offers Jaylen a max offer sheet, you could be right back over the tax.