Celtics Expected to Offer Jayson Tatum Record-Breaking Contract

Jayson Tatum did not win Finals MVP but he did do everything needed to secure his first, and the Boston Celtics’ 18th, NBA championship. From reports following Game 5, he’s going to have a very lucrative contract offer on the table very soon to top off the most important stretch of his young career.

According to multiple reports, the Celtics are expected to offer Tatum a $315 million supermax extension soon with the negotiating window now open. Tatum just finished up the third year of a five-year, $163 million contract and has a player option in the final year.

Word of the new deal first popped up ahead of Monday’s Game 5, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

“Once these NBA Finals are over, teams are now allowed to start negotiating contract extensions, negotiating with their own free agents,” Wojnarowski told Malika Andrews during pregame coverage. “Which means that the Celtics will soon present Jayson Tatum with the largest contract in NBA history, a five-year, $315 million extension.”

Then, on Tuesday after Boston actually did the thing and eliminated the Dallas Mavericks in five games to win the title, The Athletic‘s Shams Charania said he would expect the deal to be announced some time after the championship parade on Friday.

“The Celtics and Jayson Tatum will start beginning talks on that five-year, $315 million deal, that’ll happen after everyone’s sobered up,” Charania said during an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show. “The whole team is in Miami right now, they’re having a great time, and then the parade is going to be Friday. I would expect, at some point after that, Jayson Tatum and his agent and the Celtics get down to brass tacks.”

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst also appeared on the Pat McAfee Show and said Tatum will sign the deal “in the next week or two.”

Tatum is eligible for the supermax extension because he was named to an All-NBA team this past season, earning first team honors alongside Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

It is a truly enormous amount of money, but it’s also the the price of having a great player on the roster. Tatum will not settle for anything less than the maximum of what he can earn, and the Celtics will not consider lowballing him under any circumstances. As the inside reports suggest, it is a matter of when, not if, this deal happens.

Last summer, Jaylen Brown set an NBA record by signing his $300 million max extension. Now it’s Tatum’s turn.