Players With Trade Kickers

Trade kickers are contractual clauses that pay players a bonus when they’re traded, and they represent one of the tools teams have to differentiate their free agent offers from the deals competing clubs put on the table. According to the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the bonus must be paid by the team that trades the player, rather than the acquiring team.

Sometimes the kicker is a fixed amount, but usually it’s based on a percentage of the remaining value of the contract. So, a player who has a 10% trade kicker is given 10% of the amount of money he’s yet to collect on his deal. Regardless of whether the trade kicker is set at a fixed amount or a percentage, the bonus can’t exceed 15% of the remaining value of the contract. That means that if a set amount of $1MM would equal more than 15% of what the player is owed, the kicker would pay out less than $1MM in the event of a trade. If you want a more detailed explanation of how trade kickers work, check out our Hoops Rumors Glossary entry on the subject.

Most trade kickers are worth 15%, the highest percentage allowed. The trade kicker that Tyreke Evans is unusual, as it calls for him to see either a set amount ($1MM) or 15% of the value of his contract, whichever is less. Below is a list of every NBA player with an active trade kicker, listed alphabetically, along with the details of the kickers. Players who signed deals this summer are marked with an asterisk.

The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.

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