Celtics forward Sam Hauser has agreed to a four-year, $45 million contract extension, according to a league source, further solidifying the core of the reigning NBA champions for years to come.
The source said there were no player or team options for the final year of the deal, which will begin in the 2025-26 season.
Hauser, 26, has solidified his status as one of the game’s best long-range shooters this season. He’s averaging 9 points and 3 rebounds per game while shooting 42.4 percent from three-point range. He’s 9 of 16 from three-point range in the last three games of the NBA Finals against the Mavericks.
Earlier this month, the Celtics picked up Hauser’s $2.1 million option for next season, putting him in position to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season if the two sides can’t agree on an extension. But that’s no longer an issue.
In addition to getting back their top nine rotation players from their championship team, the Celtics now have all five starters from last season, plus Hauser, Payton Pritchard and Xavier Tillman under contract through at least 2025-26.
Hauser’s contract is certainly fair market value for a shooter of his caliber. But given the Celtics’ growing payroll and their position as a repeat-tax team, the repercussions of this extension will be felt when the team’s luxury-tax bill balloons by more than $60 million.
But the Celtics’ roster options are limited, and the owners are committed to capitalizing on what they see as a multi-year championship window, even as principal owner Wyc Grousbeck and his family search for a buyer in the coming months.
Hauser went undrafted in 2021 before agreeing to a two-way deal with Boston on draft night, and he became a success story for a team that didn’t have a first-round pick from 2021-23.
His two-way contract was converted to a standard NBA contract later in his rookie season, and in the summer of 2022, he signed a three-year, $5.7 million deal before taking on a larger role after Danilo Gallinari suffered a season-ending torn ACL just weeks before the start of training camp.
You can contact Adam Himmelsbach at adam.himmelsbach@globe.com. Follow him @adamhimmelsbach.
