There are currently 53 entries on our list of traded player exceptions available to teams around the league. The vast majority of those exceptions - which allow a team to take on a certain amount of salary without sending out equivalent matching salary - won't expire until after the 2026 trade deadline, but the majority of them will also expire without being used.
In many cases, it's impractical for a team to use a trade exception. The exception might be too small to be legitimately useful, or the team might not be in position to add more salary to its books due to its position relative to the luxury tax line or the tax aprons.
In some instances, the best a team can do with an exception is to roll it over for another year. For instance, if a club holds a $10MM trade exception and ends up swapping one $10MM player for another, it could use the exception to acquire the new player, creating a new $10MM TPE for the outgoing player.
However, there are a handful of trade exceptions across the league that could be genuinely valuable at this year's trade deadline, allowing teams to absorb salary without sending out any themselves. We're taking a closer look in the space below at those exceptions, which will be worth monitoring in the coming months.
