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Player movement in the NBA certainly doesn’t cease following the passage of the trade deadline. This year’s robust buyout market is testament to that, with names like Danny Granger, Glen Davis, Metta World Peace, Jimmer Fredette and Ben Gordon either having already reached buyout agreements or having engaged in talks with their teams about doing so. All of it leads up to yet another deadline.

No player waived after March 1st is eligible to play for another team in the postseason. That means anyone who wants off his team must find a way to make it happen no later than Saturday. Such players can remain free agents right up until the playoffs, but as long as they’re on waivers no later than Saturday, they’re postseason-eligible. Playoff-bound teams have made late-season signings in the past, as the Spurs did with Tracy McGrady last year, though most of the notable names generally land on new teams soon after they become free agents.

When a player and a team reach a buyout agreement, it’s the player, not the team, who gives up money. It’s common for reports to suggest that Team X bought out Player Y, but such wording is inaccurate. Commonly, players agree to relinquish a portion or the entirety of whatever the team still owes them. Often, the player is a veteran on a non-contender who wants a shot at a title, like Granger and Caron Butler. Sometimes, the buyout candidate is simply dissatisfied with his playing time, like Fredette, who’s nearing release from his rookie scale contract. It’s a calculated risk, since there’s no guarantee a player can find a new team and recoup the money he’s giving up, but most of the time agents won’t push for a buyout unless they’re certain another NBA offer is forthcoming.

Teams get to deduct the amount of the buyout from their books, and removing a player who doesn’t want to be around can help locker room dynamics. Still, teams are often reluctant to give a player up, particularly when it’s someone who’s still productive, as is the case with Granger. The Sixers have reportedly held interest in seeking a sign-and-trade that would allow them to collect assets for Granger this summer, when he’d become a free agent if he plays out the rest of his contract. Philadelphia can’t sign-and-trade Granger if there’s a buyout, so that’s probably slowed negotiations. Teams and players may also haggle over the amount of the buyout, further delaying an agreement.

Another point of negotiation may be over set-off rights, which allow teams to recoup a portion of the money they owe a player when he signs his next contract. Teams can withhold the amount of the new deal a player signs minus the one-year veteran’s minimum, divided by two. So, if a team owes a player $4MM and he signs a new deal for $2MM, the set-off amount is $2MM minus $788,872, or $1,211,128, divided by two, which comes to $605,564. The team would then subtract that amount from $4MM and owe the player $3,394,436.

In this scenario, the player collects $5,394,436, which is still more than he would have received if he hadn’t found a new deal. The amount the team could collect via set-off would be higher if the player signed a new contract for $3MM, and the player would also earn more in that case. So, there’s still financial advantage for the player to seek as lucrative a deal as possible. There have been reports suggesting that a club with extra money to spend on free agents has no financial advantage when it comes to signing buyout players, on the premise that set-off rights would force those guys to forfeit whatever they get in a new deal, but that’s not accurate. A larger new contract means the old team indeed collects more, but the player collects more, too.

Of course, if a player agrees to forgo all of the money he’s owed as part of the buyout, set-off isn’t a factor, and teams can give up their set-off rights as part of the buyout agreement.

Players can re-sign with teams that they’ve just bought their way off, but it’s highly unlikely that anyone would elect to do so. It used to be fairly common for players to be traded at the deadline, buy out their contracts with their new teams, and re-sign with their original teams, but the current collective bargaining agreement curbed that practice. Once a team trades a player, it can’t re-sign him or claim him off waivers for one year or until his contract was due to expire, whichever is earlier. So, even if a team trades a player on an expiring contract, it can’t re-sign him until July.

All players who agree to a buyout must go through waivers first, and usually the buyout agreement hinges on the player clearing waivers. Should a team put in a waiver claim, that typically means the buyout is null and void, and the new team is on the hook for the player’s entire guaranteed salary. There’s no rule against a player negotiating a buyout with a team that claims him off waivers, but that would be an unusual practice, and waiver claims are rare to begin with.

Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ was used in the creation of this post.

A source told the Plain Dealer on Thursday that in the hour leading up to the deadline, the negotiations are 10% about basketball and 90% about accounting (Twitter link). Much of the math has to do with trade exceptions, whether the deal involves using one, creating one, or both. Just about every trade that teams make provides the opportunity to create at least one new exception.

Teams can structure deals as they see fit, and sometimes there are multiple ways to create exceptions. We’ve sorted out seemingly the most favorable scenarios from each of this year’s deadline trades, as explained below. Teams don’t always take the intuitive path, so that’s why we’re treating these as exceptions a club CAN make or use, rather than ones they definitively have made or used.

For more information on how these exceptions work and the difference between a simultaneous and non-simultaneous trade, check out our Hoops Rumors Glossary entry on trade exceptions right here.

Nets-Kings

• The Nets can’t create an exception from this trade, since the salary-matching rules for taxpaying teams are stricter than for non-taxpayers. That prevents Brooklyn from structuring the swap of Jason Terry for Marcus Thornton as a swap of its own, which the Nets could do if they weren’t in the tax. Such a move would have created an exception equal to the full salary of Reggie Evans.
• The Kings can create an exception worth $2,424,687, equal to the difference between the salaries for Thornton and Terry. They can absorb Evans and his $1,695,635 salary into the Patrick Patterson exception worth $2,316,429. That would reduce the Patterson exception to $620,794.

Warriors-Lakers

• Steve Blake‘s $4MM salary fits perfectly into Golden State’s $4MM Brandon Rush exception. That allows the Warriors to structure the offloading of MarShon Brooks and Kent Bazemore as separate, one-player non-simultaneous trades. That creates a pair of exceptions, one worth $1,210,080 for Brooks and another at $788,872 for Bazemore. The ability for Golden State to send out Brooks and Bazemore individually is what makes this deal legal in the first place, since the Warriors couldn’t have aggregated the salaries of Brooks and another player in any deal. That’s because it’s been less than two months since the Warriors acquired Brooks via trade from the Celtics.
• The Lakers can create a $2,789,920 trade exception representing the difference between the salaries for Blake and Brooks. They can structure that part as its own transaction because Bazemore’s minimum salary can go into the minimum-salary exception.

Heat-Kings

• This one is straightforward. The Heat can create a $884,293 exception equal to the amount of Roger Mason Jr.‘s cap hit.
• The Kings don’t create an exception, but they used the minimum salary exception to absorb Mason without giving the Heat any player in return.

Wizards-Nuggets-Sixers

• The Nuggets can absorb Jan Vesely‘s $3,340,920 salary into their Andre Iguodala exception worth $9,868,632, reducing the Iguodala exception to $6,527,712. That allows Denver to create a $5MM exception that’s equal to Andre Miller‘s salary. They could also leave the Iguodala exception alone and create a $1,659,080 exception equal to the difference between the salaries for Miller and Vesely, but that seems a less likely course.
• The Wizards can treat the Miller-Vesely swap as its own transaction, and while they can’t create an exception from that, since Miller’s salary is greater than Vesely’s, Washington can get an exception that’s equal in value to Eric Maynor‘s salary of $2,016,000. Structuring the offloading of Maynor to Philadelphia as its own separate deal allows the Wizards to create that exception.
• The Sixers don’t get any exceptions, since they didn’t relinquish any assets in the trade at all. The Wizards simply used Philadelphia as a dumping ground for Maynor, since the Nuggets didn’t want him. Keeping him while swapping Miller for Vesely would have left Washington over the tax line. The Sixers wound up with a pair of second-round picks for their trouble, and the deal also helped them exceed the league-minimum payroll of $52.811MM, which they’d been under all season. That’s of greater consequence to the Sixers players than the team itself, since the team would have had to split the difference between its payroll and the minimum payroll among the players if it hadn’t met the minimum by season’s end. Thus, Philadelphia’s four deadline moves mean the Sixers players will miss out what might have been tidy bonus checks.

Bucks-Bobcats

• The Bucks can create an exception worth $3.25MM, the equivalent of Gary Neal‘s salary. They can do this by structuring their offloading of Neal as its own trade, with the swap of Luke Ridnour for Ramon Sessions and Jeff Adrien as another.
• There doesn’t appear to be a way for the Bobcats to gain an exception through this trade, since the deal as a whole increases their payroll, and from their perspective, there’s no way to split the deal into workable separate transactions.

Spurs-Raptors

• The Spurs can fold Austin Daye into the minimum-salary exception, creating an $1,463,000 exception worth the equivalent of Nando De Colo‘s salary.
• The Raptors add salary in the two-player swap, so there’s no way for them to create an exception short of absorbing De Colo into their existing $4,583,432 Rudy Gay exception. That would reduce that exception’s value and create a diminutive $947,907 exception for Daye’s salary, which wouldn’t serve much of a purpose. So, it’s unlikely the Raptors are using or creating an exception here.

Nuggets-Rockets

• The Nuggets can take Aaron Brooks into the minimum-salary exception to create a $1,169,880 exception equal to Jordan Hamilton‘s salary.
• The Rockets add salary in the two-player swap, and they have no existing exceptions that would facilitate the creation of another, so there’s no way for them to gain an exception in this trade.

Clippers-Sixers

• This deal involves only one player, so the Clippers can simply create a $947,907 exception that’s equal to the cap hit for Byron Mullens.
• As mentioned above, this trade and Philadelphia’s other moves helped the Sixers exceed the minimum team payroll.

Clippers-Hawks

• Much like L.A.’s trade with the Sixers, this trade involves just a single player under contract. The Clippers create an exception worth $884,293 that’s equal to the cap hit for Antawn Jamison.
• The Hawks don’t create an exception, but they used the minimum-salary exception to absorb Jamison without giving the Clippers any player in return.

Cavs-Sixers

• The trade wouldn’t work for the Cavs if it were split into smaller parts, and Cleveland adds payroll from the deal, so there’s no exception for the Cavs here.
• The Sixers remain under the cap, so they don’t create an exception for the players they’re sending out. As mentioned above, this trade and Philadelphia’s other moves helped the Sixers exceed the minimum team payroll.

Pacers-Sixers

• Indiana can’t split the deal into individual parts and still have it work, but the Pacers nonetheless gain a sizable $4,281,921 exception from the difference between Danny Granger‘s salary and the combined salaries for Evan Turner and Lavoy Allen.
• The Sixers remain under the cap, so they don’t create an exception.

Basketball Insiders and ShamSports were used in the creation of this post.

Let’s get you caught up on all of the deadline deals that went down..

• The Sixers traded Evan Turner and Lavoy Allen to the Pacers for Danny Granger and a 2015 second-round selection.
• The Wizards acquired Andre Miller in a three-team deal that will also see the Nuggets receive Jan Vesely and Philly get Eric Maynor plus two second-round picks.
• In the first deadline deal, the Nets acquired Marcus Thornton from the Kings for Jason Terry and Reggie Evans.
• The Sixers and Cavs agreed to a trade that sends Spencer Hawes to Cleveland for Earl Clark, Henry Sims, and two second-round picks.
• The Bobcats acquired Gary Neal and Luke Ridnour from the Bucks in exchange for Ramon Sessions and Jeff Adrien.
• The Warriors acquired Steve Blake from the Lakers in exchange for Kent Bazemore and MarShon Brooks.
• The Nuggets are sending Jordan Hamilton to the Rockets for Aaron Brooks.
• The Clippers traded Antawn Jamison and cash to the Hawks for the draft rights to 2005 second-round pick Cenk Akyol.
• The Clippers sent Byron Mullens and a future second-round pick to the Sixers for a conditional second-rounder.
• The Spurs and Raptors swapped Nando De Colo and Austin Daye.
• The Heat sent cash and Roger Mason Jr. over to the Kings for a second-round pick that they’ll never see.  Mason was subsequently waived.

Months of speculation around the NBA will culminate this week. The trade deadline is just three days away, and teams are gearing up for one of the busiest days on the NBA calendar. Hoops Rumors has prepared several resources to guide you as we count down the hours until 2:00pm Central on Thursday:

• We’ve profiled a number of players we consider to be trade candidates, including Kyle Lowry, Danny Granger and Thaddeus Young. You can find all those pieces linked right here.
• Not every NBA player is eligible to be traded this week. We listed the players ineligible to be dealt, and also rounded up the guys who have the ability to veto trades.
• A number of traded player exceptions are set to expire at the deadline. The list of expiring exceptions is here, while the complete list of outstanding trade exceptions is here. If you’re unclear on how exactly these exceptions work, you can read our glossary entry.
• Players on expiring contracts are generally more likely to be moved than guys with another year or two left on their deals. Our list of 2014/15 free agents includes all the players currently on expiring contracts, plus those who have some form of option for next season.
• Some players will receive a bonus if they’re traded, and that could complicate potential deals. Our list of players with trade kickers includes nearly three dozen names.
• Future first-round draft picks are precious commodities this time of year, but several teams are without first-rounders they can trade for 2014 and beyond.
• Given the possibility that a few first-round picks could change hands this week, be sure to keep tabs on our tentative 2014 draft order to see where those draft picks might land.
• If you’re looking to keep up with rumors on a particular player, check out our instructions on how to follow specific players on Hoops Rumors.