Hoops Rumors Glossary: Salary Aggregation

When an NBA team is over the salary cap and wants to make a trade, certain rules in the Collective Bargaining Agreement dictate how much salary the team is permitted to take back. These salary-matching rules are evolving – they changed prior to this season and will change again in 2024 – but in most cases, an over-the-cap team must send out nearly as much salary as it acquires for the trade to be legal.

In some scenarios, salary aggregation is required in order to legally match the incoming player’s cap hit. Aggregation is the act of combining multiple players’ salaries in order to reach that legal outgoing limit.

For example, let’s say Team A has a team salary above the first tax apron and wants to acquire a player earning $30MM from Team B. Sending out a player earning $27MM would fall short of the minimum requirement, since Team A can only bring back up to 100% of the outgoing amount. Trading a $27MM player would allow the team to acquire up to $27MM in salary.

However, by adding a second player earning $3MM to its package, Team A would reach the minimum outgoing threshold by “aggregating” its two traded players, resulting in a total of $30MM in outgoing salary — that’s enough to bring back a $30MM player.

Only player salaries can be aggregated. Trade exceptions cannot be aggregated with one another or with players. That means a team with a $10MM trade exception can’t aggregate that exception with a $20MM player (or a separate $20MM trade exception) to acquire a $30MM player.

Crucially, sending out two players together in a trade doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be aggregated.

For instance, if Team A sends out one player earning $30MM and another earning $4MM in exchange for its incoming $30MM player, there’s no need to aggregate the two outgoing salaries. Since $30MM is an amount sufficient to take back $30MM, the $4MM player can essentially be traded for “nothing,” creating a $4MM trade exception that could be used at a later date.

Because trade exceptions can only be created in “non-simultaneous” trades and salary aggregation can only be completed in a “simultaneous” trade, trade exceptions can’t be generated in scenarios in which salaries are aggregated. In the hypothetical trade above, swapping the $30MM player for the $30MM player represents a simultaneous trade, while sending out the $4MM player represents a non-simultaneous trade, resulting in the trade exception.

Here’s another example to illustrate that point, using the same $30MM incoming player: If Team A decides to salary-match by sending out one player earning $20MM and a second earning $15MM, that team can’t generate a trade exception worth the excess amount ($5MM), because the two outgoing salaries must be aggregated, resulting in a simultaneous trade.

One good recent example of salary aggregation came when the Knicks acquired Mikal Bridges from the Nets. Bridges had a cap hit of $23,300,000, so the Knicks – whose team salary was going to be above the first tax apron, had to send out at least $23.3MM to match the incoming amount.

The Knicks were going to use Bojan Bogdanovic ($19,032,850) as part of their outgoing package, but needed to add another $4,267,150 to make the deal legal. In order to reach that amount, they signed-and-traded Shake Milton to a deal with a first-year salary of $2,875,000 and partially guaranteed Mamadi Diakite‘s salary for $1,392,150, getting them exactly to $23.3MM. If Bridges had been earning a dollar more, New York would have needed to adjust either Milton’s first-year salary or Diakite’s partial guarantee to make it work.

The NBA’s trade rules state that when a team acquires a player using salary-matching or a trade exception (rather than cap room), it cannot aggregate that player’s salary in a second trade for two months.

The one exception to that rule occurs if a player is traded on or before December 16, but less than two months until that season’s trade deadline. In that case, the player is permitted to be aggregated again either on the day before the deadline or the day of the deadline.

Any player traded after December 16 can’t have his salary aggregated with another player’s before the trade deadline. But, as outlined above, that doesn’t mean that a player acquired after today can’t be traded again before the deadline along with other players — it simply means his salary can’t be aggregated as part of the deal.

Here are a couple more notes related to salary aggregation:

• Beginning in the 2024 offseason, a team whose total salary is above the second tax apron will not be permitted to aggregate salaries as part of a trade. A team that does aggregate salaries in a trade will become hard-capped at the second apron for the rest of that league year (or for the following league year, if the trade is made between the end of the regular season and June 30).
• If a team is aggregating three (or more) player salaries in a trade for matching purposes in order to take back fewer players than that, no more than one of the aggregated players can be earning the minimum salary. This rule doesn’t apply between December 15 and the trade deadline, but is in effect the rest of the year.

Note: This is a Hoops Rumors Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to trades, free agency, or other aspects of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ was used in the creation of this post.

A previous version of this post was published in 2022. This post was updated in 2025 to reflect new salary-matching rules.