Breaking Down The NBA Trade Deadline, Team By Team

[DAK!]

Originally Posted by chuck

You are right. We loose # players off our roster when they go to D league. My fingers were typing too fast for my brain. Sorry. :-(

No worries...happens to me all the time. Literally.

[Urukgali]

I've got one question...Is it possible to aquire draft picks for expirings ?
What i'm thinking right now is if we don't make any trade involving Thomas or Harpring now,can we just trade their contracts for draft picks ? Because if i'm not mistaken those contract will be useless when summer starts but with draft picks we can trade up and get more valuable draft picks.
So is it doable ?

[Trueblood]

Originally Posted by Urukgali

I've got one question...Is it possible to aquire draft picks for expirings ?
What i'm thinking right now is if we don't make any trade involving Thomas or Harpring now,can we just trade their contracts for draft picks ? Because if i'm not mistaken those contract will be useless when summer starts but with draft picks we can trade up and get more valuable draft picks.
So is it doable ?

You can only do that if the team you are trading with has the cap space to absorb the contract that the Thunder would be sending out or they have a trade exception that will absorb the contract. For example, let's say Harpring makes $6 million. If we trade him and don't get a contract in return but only future draft picks, the other team will have to be at least $6 million under the cap to make the trade.

The problem is that nobody will do that trade because the draft pick has more value than Harpring, who is just a waste of money this year since he won't be playing. If anything, it would be the other way around. If someone were to take on Harping's deal, they would want something good thrown in so it would be the Thunder who would have to throw in a pick as well as Harpring in return for some useless future 2nd rounder.

[DAK!]

Originally Posted by Urukgali

I've got one question...Is it possible to aquire draft picks for expirings ?
What i'm thinking right now is if we don't make any trade involving Thomas or Harpring now,can we just trade their contracts for draft picks ? Because if i'm not mistaken those contract will be useless when summer starts but with draft picks we can trade up and get more valuable draft picks.
So is it doable ?

I'm not going to make a blanket statement of no because Presti has proven that he's a master of doing the undo-able, but I will say that according to common salary cap rules it doesn't seem likely....here's why.

The common theme for trading expiring contracts is to give cap relief to another team while acquiring good assets in return, pretty much like you proposed. The problem is that usually when a team wants to give up assets for expiring contracts it's because they are either over the cap or very close to it. In your scenario we'd be giving up several million dollars in expiring contracts and receive draft picks in exchange, which means we'd be giving up a bunch of cap space and acquiring none, because draft picks don't count yet toward the cap. Another team would be taking on the salary of the expiring contract while giving up zero salary from the draft picks. According to my understanding of the CBA a team CANNOT receive more than 20% more of a cap hit if they would go over the cap in a trade. $8 million to $0 million is definitely more than 20%, lol, so unless the team would still be under the cap AFTER they received the expiring contract from us then they wouldn't be allowed to make the trade. The only way they would be able to is if they gave us appropriate monetary contracts of players in return. Also, it wouldn't make sense for a team to get an expiring contract without wanting to get rid of players with lengthy deals because they'd just be spinning their tires, especially if they're going to be giving up draft picks also. In any trade involving our expiring contracts we'd be taking on other players in return, which could be a good thing if a team is desperate enough to want to give up a good young player to get rid of some salary cap space, similar to what happened with us an Utah.

[thebig3]

Originally Posted by DAK!

I'm not going to make a blanket statement of no because Presti has proven that he's a master of doing the undo-able, but I will say that according to common salary cap rules it doesn't seem likely....here's why.

The common theme for trading expiring contracts is to give cap relief to another team while acquiring good assets in return, pretty much like you proposed. The problem is that usually when a team wants to give up assets for expiring contracts it's because they are either over the cap or very close to it. In your scenario we'd be giving up several million dollars in expiring contracts and receive draft picks in exchange, which means we'd be giving up a bunch of cap space and acquiring none, because draft picks don't count yet toward the cap. Another team would be taking on the salary of the expiring contract while giving up zero salary from the draft picks. According to my understanding of the CBA a team CANNOT receive more than 20% more of a cap hit if they would go over the cap in a trade. $8 million to $0 million is definitely more than 20%, lol, so unless the team would still be under the cap AFTER they received the expiring contract from us then they wouldn't be allowed to make the trade. The only way they would be able to is if they gave us appropriate monetary contracts of players in return. Also, it wouldn't make sense for a team to get an expiring contract without wanting to get rid of players with lengthy deals because they'd just be spinning their tires, especially if they're going to be giving up draft picks also. In any trade involving our expiring contracts we'd be taking on other players in return, which could be a good thing if a team is desperate enough to want to give up a good young player to get rid of some salary cap space, similar to what happened with us an Utah.

Here's what I understand from the Utah trade ... correct me if I am wrong.

OKC basically took on Harpring's contract for this year (prorated portion of $6M) because Utah would have been over the cap this year and they needed to dump salary this year. OKC got Maynor in return for absorbing the 2009/10 salary for Harpring.

Harpring's contract runs out after this year, so if OKC is willing to commit to a player under contract for multiple years, they could trade Harpring. The other team effectively dumps salary beginning in 2010/11 because Harpring is no longer on their payroll. OKC gets a player locked into a longer-term deal.

Is this accurate? the right way to look at it?

[RicanThunder]

Yes, also, Harpring's contract is attractive because insurance pays 80% of it, which means the team only has to pay the remaining 20% (pretty much prorated for the rest of the season).

[Urukgali]

Thank you for reply guys.
I was thinking about that after writing this post and i have to agree that that deal with Harpring would be insane for anohter team since it's pretty worthless.
But wouldn't that be smarter with Thomas? Lets say some team is prepearing for summer trade and they could use some big for half of the season aswell.They got Thomas.They let him play as much as they need and after season ends he is out of the team so they don't have to pay for him anymore.They also give up on a draft pick to save some more money.The poroblem is that probably it isn't the best way to dump salary...a player who would be guaranteed 750-800K(?) but the thing Thomas can also play makes it a bit more desireable.And that draft pick could be in 50-60's.For us i guess it would be still better to get rights to very last player in the draft then benching Etan for the rest of the season(unless we take his influence on youth into consideration).

I know it wouldn't be any big step on the trade market...I was just curious how this works.I'm still pretty confused with most of those luxury cap etc rules.Even when i read the explanations it seems like chineese to me