Technically, teams trade
contracts, not players.
On the official trade call with the league office, the NBA’s lawyer specifies that the contract of the player is being traded, then reads out some of the details of that contract for all parties. (Both sides, of course, are deeply familiar with said contract by this point.) Afterward, the actual trade memo from the league will say something to the effect of “
Memphis trades the contract of Player X to New York for the contract of Player Y.”
This is an important distinction because it helps you to understand two apparently conflicting factors from the past week:
- Norman Powell is a better player than Caris LeVert.
- Trading Norman Powell returned less capital than trading Caris Levert.
In the wake of
Sunday’s reported deal that would send
Ricky Rubio, Cleveland’s 2022 first-round pick, a second-round pick swap and a future second to Indiana for LeVert, two fan bases in particular have questions.
Cavs fans, after slapping their foreheads that they just pushed their chips in a year after going 22-50, wonder why they traded for LeVert rather than Powell if Powell would have cost less and is better. Meanwhile,
Blazers fans are asking why they got less for Powell than Indy did for LeVert if Powell is better.
Again, trades aren’t technically about players. As a noted Danish hooper named Hamlet* once said: “The contract’s the thing.” For Cleveland, there is a very important distinction between the contract of Powell and the contract of LeVert: Powell is signed for four years beyond this one, at increasing money, until he makes $20.5 million in 2025-26 at the age of 32.
(*Editor’s note: Hamlet wasn’t a real person and did not play basketball.)
Is Powell’s contract so bad? In the eyes of some teams, those out years are a liability. Fans and observers are generally too optimistic about the aging curve (“Look,
Jeff Green is still playing!”) because of the availability bias — they remember the ones who stayed in the league and forget the great number of players who hit a wall and went splat in their late 20s and early 30s. Hey, remember when
Greg Monroe got a max free-agent deal? He just signed a 10-day this past week. He’s 31.
Powell is a valuable offensive player right now and may defy the odds, but Portland also overreached on the years when re-signing him this past summer; there’s a reason teams weren’t falling all over themselves to get that contract.
LeVert, meanwhile, is signed for just this year and next. That seems almost
too brief, right? But the issue here is the convenient fact that LeVert’s and
Kevin Love’s contracts both expire in the summer of 2023. Because of that, the Cavs retain an opportunity to add a max-ish contract with cap space before
Evan Mobley is due for an extension, even with Jarrett Allen signed for $20 million a year and
Darius Garland presumably getting a big chunk of change this coming summer.
Technically, teams trade contracts, not players. What to make of the two trades that have kicked off the NBA trade deadline in earnest.
theathletic.com