It's been almost a year since the Boston Celtics traded Evan Fournier to the New York Knicks. During that deal, the Cs acquired a trade player exception worth $17.1 million which they have yet to utilize. As it turns out, however, Boston has decided to forgo the exception as it reaches its expiration date at midnight on Monday.

According to team insider John Karalis of the Boston Sports Journal, the Celtics have not found any deal that they like, and have opted to just not utilize Fournier's trade player exception:

“I'm told nothing good enough came along for the Celtics to use the Fournier TPE, and it will expire without being used,” Karalis wrote in his tweet.

Over $17 million is a lot of money, and ideally, the Celtics could have used this amount to bring in a player or players that would combine to have the same salary. This could have been one or two impact players that could help Boston with their quest to get back into the NBA Finals in 2022-23. However, as reports suggest, the consequences of the same were too substantial for the Celtics given how they would have fallen deep into luxury tax if they had decided to utilize the exception.

It is worth noting, however, that Boston is still in possession of two more “substantial” trade player exceptions, which will not expire until this coming season's trade deadline. The Celtics can still use this to strengthen their roster during the regular season, but the fact still remains that unless they offload some of the salaries that are currently on their payroll, this team will need to pay up a substantial amount for luxury tax.