The Boston Celtics have signed forward Sam Hauser to a four-year, $45 million extension. This will keep Hauser under contract through the 2028-2029 season. The Celtics role player was one of the best three-point shooters this season, shooting a percentage of 42.4%. His three-point percentage ranked fourth-best in the NBA among players with more than 400 attempts.
The 6’8 forward played valuable minutes off the bench and contributed a solid amount of points. Payton Pritchard and him were the best role players on the team and added great depth to this championship-winning squad. The white guy who’s great at shooting threes has been a long-running trope in the NBA but if it works for you, you won a championship, and now you have a $45 million extension, keep doing what you’re doing!
Sam Hauser 2023-24 Stats Breakdown
If you’re even somewhat familiar with Sam Hauser, you already know he is a sharpshooter who can throw down some dunks and alley-oops once in a while. He didn’t get the nickname “Slam Hauser” for nothing. Let’s take a look at his stats from the Boston Celtics NBA Finals campaign this season.
In addition to his three-point percentage of 42.4%, Hauser shot 44.6% from the field this season. He had a great free throw percentage, shooting 89.5% from the charity stripe. The Celtics forward averaged 2.8 rebounds per game while averaging 22.0 minutes.
Hauser ranked second on the Celtics in three-point percentage among players who averaged 15 plus minutes per game. Jrue Holiday was just ahead of him at 42.9%. The blonde bench player had the second-most points off the bench with nine per game. The player who had the most was none other than the half-court shot king Payton Pritchard.
Having a solid bench player like Sam Hauser is what makes a good team great. That way when Tatum or Brown are tired, they can have him come in and pick up the slack. The team will be in good hands knowing that this guy won’t miss a beat. He can drain some threes with no problem.
The Celtics could be going up against a super team and be down a little bit early but it won’t matter when the stars get tired and the bench players struggle to score or keep up on defense. The dark horse of this Celtics team this season was their depth. With almost any lineup of guys, they could go out there and be a well-oiled machine. They were solid from top to bottom thanks to guys like Hauser.
The Celtics Seem To Be Printing Money
This Hauser deal continues an expensive offseason for the Boston Celtics as they have now given contract extensions to Jayson Tatum, Derrick White, and now Sam Hauser. And the extensions given to Tatum and White weren’t just regular deals, they were max extensions totaling up to $440 million.
The Celtics also gave Jrue Holiday a four-year max deal worth $135 million before the playoffs. Plus, who could forget the supermax extension given to Brown last summer, the most expensive contract in NBA history? That $304 million record contract was beaten just a couple of weeks ago when Tatum signed a five-year $314 million supermax extension. Sheesh!
How does a single team have all this money? It’s not like this is an MLB team that doesn’t have a salary cap. This might seem like an awful lot of money to be spending on players.
However, a championship-winning team does make a lot of money after all, with ticket sales from a whole playoff run, sponsorship deals, media rights deals, and merchandise, something tells me the Celtics aren’t quite short on cash. On top of all of this, the Celtics are the fourth most valuable NBA franchise.
With all this green given to the guys who wear the green, I think it is all worth it. You’re keeping together one of the most well-performing teams in recent memory. Sam Hauser is an important piece to keeping the Boston Celtics a deep team. And most important of all, you’re keeping the dynamic duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown together likely until the end of the 2028-2029 season. That is something you simply cannot put a price on.
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