Jrue Holiday being sent from Celtics to Trail Blazers for Anfernee Simons and picks, AP source says

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Jrue Holiday being sent from Celtics to Trail Blazers for Anfernee Simons and picks, AP source says

2025-06-24 23:31 Last Updated At：23:41

Jrue Holiday's acquisition from Portland helped spark the Boston Celtics to their NBA-record 18th championship last season.

Holiday is being sent back to the Trail Blazers by a Boston team that could now be in transition, a person with knowledge of the details said early Tuesday.

ESPN reported that the Celtics would get Anfernee Simons and two second-round draft picks from the Trail Blazers.

The departure of Holiday, who made his sixth career All-Defensive team selection in his first season in Boston, was confirmed to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the deal is not yet official.

Holiday was traded by the Milwaukee Bucks to Portland in September 2023 when the Bucks acquired perennial All-Star Damian Lillard. Holiday was then dealt days later to the Celtics, moving right into the starting lineup and eventually earning his second career title last June.

But the Celtics now have lost a second member of that starting lineup for at least part of next season, with All-NBA forward Jayson Tatum having surgery after an Achilles tendon injury in the loss to the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Simons could provide some of the scoring punch the Celtics have lost, having averaged 19.3 points last season after going for a career-best 22.6 per game in 2023-24.

But the Celtics will miss the defense and leadership that Holiday provided. The two-time Olympic gold medalist's scoring was down, though, with the 11.1 points he averaged last season his lowest since his rookie season in 2009-10, and more than eight points lower than the 19.3 he put up in 2022-23 with the Bucks, when he was an All-Star.

More than that, the Celtics were likely motivated to trade Holiday because of the $104.4 million owed to him over the remaining three seasons of the contract extension they gave him last year, on top of the huge deals for Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

Holiday, who helped the Bucks win the 2021 NBA title, has averaged 15.8 points in a 16-year career that also includes stints with Philadelphia and New Orleans.

Before trading Holiday, the Celtics’ payroll next year was slated to be around $225 million, creating a tax bill of almost $280 million. The combined potential $500 million total price tag would have been a league record.

The larger concern was that figure would have exceeded not only the projected luxury tax threshold of $155 million, but also the first penalty apron projected of around $196 million and the second penalty apron of around $208 million. Both barriers carry restrictive penalties including limits on trades and what teams are allowed to do via free agency.

And that was all on top of the lack of clarity on if the team’s incoming ownership would want to keep paying such hefty penalties to maintain the current roster after agreeing to a purchase in March that is expected to have a final price of a minimum of $6.1 billion.

Trading Holiday suggests that new ownership wants at least some reduced spending before the start of next season. That’s especially true with Tatum out for at least a huge portion of next season and Brown coming off knee surgery.

Tatum signed an NBA-record five-year, $314 million contract last July that will begin next season and pay him $54 million. Brown is playing under a five-year, $304 million deal that kicked in this past season. He will make $53 million next season. That is followed by Kristaps Porzingis ($30 million), Derrick White ($28 million) and Sam Hauser ($10 million).

Porzingis seemingly would be the next potential player the Celtics would consider moving, with $60 million total left in his deal before he is eligible for free agency again in the summer of 2026. But there are questions about his health after he missed a significant number of games in the second half of the regular season and was limited in the playoffs because of a nagging respiratory illness.

No matter which direction the Celtics decide to go, Boston president of basketball operations Brad Stevens acknowledged last month after his team was eliminated from the playoffs that it’s unclear whether so-called championship windows are becoming smaller because of the current rules governing the salary cap.

“That’s a good question. I don’t know,” Stevens said. “I think certainly it is more challenging in certain circumstances for sure.”

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Hennepin County prosecutor calls on the public to share Renee Good shooting evidence with her office

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty on Friday called on members of the public to send any video or other evidence in the fatal shooting of Renee Good directly to her office, challenging the Trump administration's decision to leave the investigation solely to the FBI.

Moriarty said that although her office has collaborated effectively with the FBI in past cases, she is concerned by the Trump administration's decision to bar state and local agencies from playing any role in the investigation into Wednesday's killing of Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis.

She also said that despite the Trump administration’s insistence that the officer who shot Good has complete legal immunity, that isn’t the case.

“We do have jurisdiction to make this decision with what happened in this case,” she said at a news conference. “It does not matter that it was a federal law enforcement agent.”

Moriarty said her office would post a link for the public to submit footage of the shooting, even though she acknowledged that she wasn't sure what legal outcome submissions might produce.

The prosecutor's announcement came on a third day of Minneapolis protests over Good's killing and a day after federal immigration officers shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon.

Good's wife, Becca Good, released a statement to Minnesota Public Radio on Friday saying, “kindness radiated out of her.”

"On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns," Becca Good said.

“I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him,” she wrote. “That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.”

The reaction to the Good's shooting was immediate in the city where police killed George Floyd in 2020, with hundreds of protesters converging on the shooting scene and the school district canceling classes for the rest of the week as a precaution.

On Thursday night, hundreds marched in freezing rain down one of Minneapolis’ major thoroughfares, chanting “ICE out now!” and holding signs saying, “Killer ice off our streets." And on Friday, protesters were out again demonstrating outside of a federal facility that is serving as a hub for the immigration crackdown that began Tuesday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Authorities erected barricades outside the facility Friday.

City workers, meanwhile, removed makeshift barricades made of old Christmas trees and other debris that had been blocking the streets near the scene of Good's shooting. Officials said they would leave up a shrine to the 37-year-old mother of three.

The Portland shootings happened outside a hospital Thursday afternoon. Federal immigration officers shot and wounded a man and woman, identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Venezuela nationals Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, who were inside a vehicle, and their conditions weren't immediately known. The FBI and the Oregon Department of Justice were investigating.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the city council called on ICE to end all operations in the city until a full investigation is completed. Hundreds protested Thursday night at a local ICE building. Early Friday, Portland police reported that officers had arrested several protesters after asking the to get out of a street to allow traffic to flow.

Just as it did following Good's shooting, DHS defended the actions of the officers in Portland, saying it occurred after a Venezuelan man with alleged gang ties and who was involved in a recent shooting tried to “weaponize” his vehicle to hit the officers. It wasn't immediately clear if the shootings were captured on video, as Good's was.

The Minneapolis shooting happened on the second day of the immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, which Homeland Security said is the biggest immigration enforcement operation ever. More than 2,000 officers are taking part and Noem said they have made more than 1,500 arrests.

The government is also shifting immigration officers to Minneapolis from sweeps in Louisiana, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. This represents a pivot, as the Louisiana crackdown that began in December had been expected to last into February.

Good's death — at least the fifth tied to immigration sweeps since Trump took office — has resonated far beyond Minneapolis, as protests happening in other places, including Texas, California, Detroit and Missouri.

In Washington, D.C., on Thursday, a woman held a sign that said, “Stop Trump’s Gestapo,” as hundreds of people marched to the White House. Protesters in Pflugerville, Texas, north of Austin, banged on the walls of an ICE facility. And a man in Los Angeles burned an American flag in front of federal detention center.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly characterized the Minneapolis shooting as an act of self-defense and cast Good as a villain, suggesting she used her vehicle as a weapon to attack the officer who shot her.

But state and local officials and protesters rejected that characterization, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey saying videos show the self-defense argument is “garbage.”

Several bystanders captured footage of Good's killing, which happened in a neighborhood south of downtown.

The recordings show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of it pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.

It is not clear from the videos if the vehicle makes contact with the officer, and there is no indication of whether the woman had interactions with agents earlier. After the shooting, the SUV speeds into two cars parked on a curb before crashing to a stop.

The federal agent who fatally shot Good is an Iraq War veteran who has served for nearly two decades in the Border Patrol and ICE, according to records obtained by AP.

Noem has not publicly named him, but a Homeland Security spokesperson said her description of his injuries last summer refers to an incident in Bloomington, Minnesota, in which court documents identify him as Jonathan Ross.

Ross got his arm stuck in the window of a vehicle whose driver was fleeing arrest on an immigration violation. Ross was dragged and fired his Taser. A jury found the driver guilty of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.

Attempts to reach Ross, 43, at phone numbers and email addresses associated with him were not successful.

Associated Press reporters Steve Karnowski and Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis; Ed White in Detroit; Valerie Gonzalez in Brownsville, Texas; Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma; Michael Biesecker in Washington; Jim Mustian and Safiyah Riddle in New York; Ryan Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.