Which Teams Have Traded Player Exceptions To Use Before Deadline?

Which Teams Have Traded Player Exceptions To Use Before Deadline?

We are mere days away from the 2024 NBA Trade Deadline, which will be on Thursday, Feb. 8 at 3:00 p.m. EST. Of course, at this time of year, plenty of speculation arises around the league about which players may or may not be traded plus which teams are buyers and sellers. We won’t ultimately know which teams have improved the most–or least–until the deadline passes. But, as of right now, we can only speculate.

There have been a handful of trades so far, most recently being the Memphis Grizzlies trading Steven Adams to the Houston Rockets for Victor Oladipo and three second-round picks. The Grizzlies were able to generate a $12.6 million traded player exception (TPE) by trading Adams since Oladipo fit into a $12.4 million disabled player exception as a result of Ja Morant‘s season-ending shoulder injury.

Today, we are going to talk about TPEs and which teams will have theirs expire before summer.

A traded player exception allows teams (above the cap) to trade for a player without matching salary up to the exception’s amount, plus $250K. These exceptions last one full calendar year. For example, the Portland Trail Blazers have an $8.3 million trade exception generated by trading Gary Payton II to the Golden State Warriors ahead of last year’s Feb. 9 deadline. The Blazers could hypothetically trade for any player who’s making $8.55 million or less to fit into that specific exception without matching salary. The exception will expire after the deadline on Feb. 9.

You can use the exception to acquire multiple players, but you cannot combine the exceptions (i.e. I cannot combine two separate $4.5 million and 3.1 million exceptions to create one big $7.1 million exception).

There are currently 55 active trade exceptions across the NBA– 21 will expire ahead of this upcoming summer. Most trade exceptions don’t get used because they’re of small amounts, thus teams are unable to find a player or multiple players who will fit into the exception’s confines.

So that does not mean all of these will be used–most likely won’t. Nevertheless, let’s examine which ones will drift into the wind, never to be seen again (if they are not all the way used), once that 3:00 p.m. EST timer is up Thursday.

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