The NBA calendar hitting Jan. 15 marks yet another significant date, as 20 more 2019 free agents saw their trade restrictions listed. Now, 96% of the league is trade eligible.
To get a better sense of the 2019-20 trade market, we have broken down the entire player pool into three categories below: expiring contracts, long-term deals and players still carrying trade restrictions.
We've organized these tables by player role (franchise centerpiece, All-Star, starter, reserve, etc.), salary and years remaining on their contracts. You can use these tables when attempting to determine what trades are possible across the league -- especially since most teams don't have cap space and will need to trade salaries that match within 125%.
Expiring contracts
Many of the bloated contracts from the summer of 2016 are now expiring, including Chandler Parsons, Ian Mahinmi and Bismack Biyombo. Teams can attempt to flip those large, one-year deals for future assets in trades where they take on low-value, long-term contracts. We saw that occur back in late December when Cleveland moved Jordan Clarkson's expiring contract to Utah for Dante Exum and draft picks.
There are two issues with that strategy this year, though: The league has very few toxic contracts teams feel desperate to move, and not many franchises are prioritizing cap space in 2020. One potential outcome here is that teams hold onto their expiring contracts past the deadline so they can use them in July sign-and-trades.
Two or more seasons remaining
This group makes up 68% of the NBA, but only a handful -- Dion Waiters, Cristiano Felicio -- carry contracts that exceed $7 million while hardly cracking a rotation. Of the 300 players in this group, we classify half as franchise cornerstones, All-Stars, starters or key reserves.
That means we could see fewer trades driven by financial needs and more purely based on basketball, as one NBA general manager told ESPN.
The trade restrictions
Not every player is trade eligible once we get to Jan. 15. Of the 441 players in the NBA, 42 have some type of lingering restriction.
Here is that list, with an explainer below:
Signing: Free agents who sign a contract with their own team -- using Bird rights to exceed the cap -- cannot be traded for three months. Most of these restrictions expire on Jan. 15.
One-year bird rights: This restriction applies if a free agent signs a one-year contract and will have Bird rights with his current team when he becomes a free agent. A player can still be traded but must consent to the deal. If he does, the Bird rights do not transfer to his new team.
Extension: Depending on the type of extension, a player becomes trade ineligible for either six months or one year.
Poison pill: For players still on their rookie deals before an extension kicks in, the NBA counts their fourth-year salary as outgoing money and the average of the extension amount and last year of their rookie contract as incoming money. One example: Ben Simmons would count as $8.1 million in outgoing salary for the 76ers but $29.4 million for an acquiring team.