If your team was not willing or able to complete a deal in time for trade deadline, the good news is that the trade deadline is not a roster deadline. Waivings, signings and waiver claims can be made up to and including the last day of the regular season, and some of the players who have been traded as financial filler in deals – or who were not dealt when they were expected to be – might now be bought out of their incumbent contracts and hitting the free agency market in the springtime. Indeed, some already have been.
This is an annual cycle, and in the past, it has made for some significant moves. A particularly strong recent example was the case of Markieff Morris, who posted 19 points in Game 3 of the 2020 NBA Finals having been bought out by the Detroit Pistons only a few weeks prior, with others such as Boris Diaw (San Antonio, 2012), Peja Stojakovic (Dallas Mavericks, 2011) and the combination of Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli (Philadelphia 76ers, 2018) also being impactful players in their short stays.
Developments in the Collective Bargaining Agreement have tempered the potential impact slightly. Galvanized by the absurdity of the Boston Celtics trading Gary Payton in 2005 only to re-sign him a week later, the 2005 CBA saw a rule implemented which ensured that a player could not return to the team that traded him for a period of 30 days; however, after the Cleveland Cavaliers salary-dumped Zydrunas Ilgauskas in 2010 only to immediately re-sign him after that period, the 2011 CBA modified the rule to make it so that a cannot reacquire a player it traded away during the same season.
In the latest CBA, prohibitions go even further. Teams that are above the first tax apron cannot sign players whose previous salary was more than the amount of the Non-Taxpayer MLE or $12,405,000, which puts the kybosh on many of the moves that fans of the Boston Celtics, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, L.A. Clippers, Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns may be hoping for. The rich can only get slightly richer, and the player’s current salaries are important now in a way they were not before.
Nevertheless, there are always available players, and always interested teams. Here are some of the players expected to be in the buyout market over the coming weeks.