The NBA’s in-season trade market typically doesn’t pick up until the winter, since players who signed free agent contracts in the offseason aren’t eligible to be moved until December 15. By that point, with the regular season approaching the two-month mark, teams have a better idea of where they stand, how they want to approach the rest of the season, and which players they might want to trade.
While most players around the NBA will be trade-eligible at that point, not all of them will be. The NBA’s rules for recently-signed players dictate that those players can be dealt as of December 15 or three months after they signed, whichever comes later. So a player like Metta World Peace, who signed with the Lakers on September 23, wouldn’t be eligible to be traded until December 23.
Finally, there’s a separate group of players that won’t become trade-eligible until January 15, and those are the guys we’ll focus on in this post. These players all meet a specific set of criteria: Not only did they re-sign with their previous team this offseason, but they got a raise of at least 20%, their salary is worth more than the minimum, and their team was over the cap, using Bird or Early Bird rights to sign them.
Here’s the list of players who cannot be traded until January 15, 2017.
- Nicolas Batum (Hornets)
- Bradley Beal (Wizards)
- Tarik Black (Lakers)
- Mike Conley (Grizzlies)
- Allen Crabbe (Trail Blazers)*
- Jamal Crawford (Clippers)
- DeMar DeRozan (Raptors)
- Andre Drummond (Pistons)
- Evan Fournier (Magic)
- Manu Ginobili (Spurs)*
- Maurice Harkless (Trail Blazers)
- LeBron James (Cavaliers)*
- Tyler Johnson (Heat)*
- Meyers Leonard (Trail Blazers)
- Dirk Nowitzki (Mavericks)*
- Miles Plumlee (Bucks)
- Austin Rivers (Clippers)
- J.R. Smith (Cavaliers)
- Lance Thomas (Knicks)
- Marvin Williams (Hornets)
- Tyler Zeller (Celtics)
Note: Players marked with an asterisk also have the ability to veto trades during the 2016/17 league year.
Information from Basketball Insiders was used in the creation of this post.