A traded player exception created a year ago by the Thunder is set to expire, as Bobby Marks of ESPN tweets. If it goes unused today, the TPE – which allows Oklahoma City to acquire a player without sending out any salary in return – will disappear.
The Thunder initially generated the exception in a trade with the Sixers, sending Ersan Ilyasova to Philadelphia and getting Jerami Grant in return. The original amount of the trade exception was $7,419,569, the difference between the two players’ salaries. However, Oklahoma City used a portion of the TPE at last season’s trade deadline to acquire Doug McDermott. It’s now worth $4,936,529.
While it’s not a huge exception, the $4.94MM TPE represents the Thunder’s best means of acquiring another rotation player. The team has two more TPEs that won’t expire until next July, but they’re more modest, at $2.55MM and $1.49MM. The Thunder are over the cap, over the tax, and no longer have their mid-level or bi-annual exceptions available, so they’re limited to offering minimum salary deals to any free agent for the rest of 2017/18.
Still, a last-minute deal to use the trade exception would be a surprise. There aren’t many trades out there this early in the season, and the Thunder are likely reluctant to increase team salary anyway, since the club is approximately $13MM above the tax line.
As our tracker shows, the Thunder’s TPE is the only one left with a 2017 expiry date. The next one to expire will be a Cavs TPE worth about $4.84MM — Cleveland has until January 7 to use it.