Several NBA teams have told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that they’re “easing out” of the trade market, with a few hours left before today’s deadline, tweets Wojnarowski. According to Woj, those clubs are shifting their focus to a buyout market that is expected to be more robust than usual.
For the last several weeks, we’ve repeatedly heard various sources express pessimism about how active this year’s trade deadline will be, so Wojnarowski’s report is just the latest signal that we may be in for a slow deadline. Still, it’s possible that teams are posturing — the last five NBA seasons have all featured at least eight deadline-day deals, so we’ll see if teams can match that figure this year.
As for which teams may be focusing more on the buyout market than the trade market, clubs over the luxury tax line – or close to that threshold – may be reluctant to take on money in trades, preferring to make low-cost signings on the free agent market. Tim Kawakami of The Athletic tweets that the Warriors may fall into this group. I could see the Raptors, Wizards, Rockets, and Thunder leaning that way too.
Teams with disabled player exceptions also may prefer to sign a free agent rather than trying to find a trade candidate who meets the required criteria. Outside of the Celtics, who will use their disabled player exception to add Greg Monroe, the Nets, Heat, Pistons, Clippers, Jazz, and Pelicans all have DPEs.
Since the NBA moved up its trade deadline two weeks to February 8, the buyout period will be longer than usual this year. A player must be waived by March 1 in order to retain his playoff eligibility for a new team. Typically, the window between the trade deadline and March 1 is pretty small, but it will last three weeks in 2018.
Luke, how does a buyout work for the salary cap for team doing the buyout?
Nothing too complicated. The team doing the buyout would recover whatever amount the player was willing to give up. So if a player making $15MM agreed to give up $1.5MM as part of a buyout, his cap hit would be reduced to $13.5MM.
Gotcha. And that basically goes the same for a multi-year BO, like if Knicks BO Noah?
Yeah, a buyout for Noah could be applied to his cap hit for the next two seasons (not this season).
So, what happens if a team buys out a player with a player option for next year (ie. Ron Baker)? Does next year’s salary then count on the cap, or is that wiped out?
If a player with a player option is waived, it would count against the cap. If the player has a team option, it wouldn’t.
Luke random question but can you explain to me what a trade exception is?
Good timing — I wrote many words on this earlier today! Link: link to hoopsrumors.com