Under the NBA’s old Collective Agreement, which was in effect through the 2016/17 season, a player’s full salary (not including unlikely incentives) was used for trade purposes, whether or not it was guaranteed. If a player had an $10MM salary with a partial guarantee of $1MM, his outgoing salary in a trade was the same as it would have been for a player who had a fully guaranteed $10MM contract.
That’s no longer the case under the league’s new CBA, however. While contracts signed under the old agreement still operate by the old rules, contracts signed after July 1, 2017 will be subject to the rules of the current CBA.
Under the current CBA, only the guaranteed portion of a player’s contract counts for outgoing salary purposes in a trade, limiting the appeal of non-guaranteed salaries as trade chips...
Complicating matters further is that a team can’t simply circumvent the new rules by trading a player before a league year ends on June 30, then having his new team waive him when his non-guaranteed salary goes into effect on July 1. After the end of the regular season, a player’s outgoing salary for trade purposes is the lesser of his current-year salary and the guaranteed portion of his salary for the following season.
