NBA - Better Trades

Trades in the NBA are a fairly common occurrence. There's no prescribed date that makes it hot time to create better trades in professional basketball, although action does pick up a bit when the trade deadline approaches. Otherwise, any time is a good time for a general manager to propose better trades to a colleague.

Why would an NBA team want to make a trade to begin win? What is the genesis of these bettertrades? Is it reasonable to believe that general managers can sit around a hotel lobby or pick up a telephone and make an offer for another player? Yes, it happens all the time. Many of the sports legendary better trades occurred while general managers were having dinner together or enjoying a beverage in the lobby of a hotel.

The NBA is governed by a salary cap, which always comes into play whenever a bettertrade is proposed. This is different than major league baseball, which doesn't have a salary cap and allows member organizations to spend as much money as they wish. Baseball's free-wheeling structure also hampers the numbers of teams who are able to compete for the championship; it's primarily the big market teams with plenty of dough who are the ones in the championship picture each year. The NBA allows for a more competitive playoff field, since no team is capable to buying an all-star team and bankrolling its way into the title game.

There are many intricacies surrounding the NBA's salary cap rules, stipulations which make it trickier to create better trades. The main thing to remember is any team can sign their own free agents, regardless of the cost of the contract and regardless of their standing in the salary cap. This leads to many sign-and-trade agreements, a better trading technique that permits franchises to move players from one team to another and skirt the rules for the salary cap.

How do professional teams determine who gets traded? This is a component of better trades that falls in a gray area, since no one really knows the rationale behind a trade. Is it a better trade to send a small playmaking guard to another team in exchange for a brutish power forward? It all depends on the circumstances. Perhaps the first team had an overabundance of talent at guard, but needed some beef to hit the boards. In that case it will definitely be one of the better trades in the league.

An NBA team isn't afraid to make a bettertrade with one of its top players. Milwaukee traded Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Atlanta traded Dominique Wilkins. Charlotte traded Kobe Bryant. Los Angeles traded Shaquille O'Neal. Philadelphia traded Wilt Chamberlain. All had their reasons at the time, but it usually doesn't turn out to be a better trade when a top NBA player is shipped to another club.

Sometimes teams can keep their rosters intact for years and years, while others are constantly in flux, as general managers attempt to make a series of better trades in order to catch up with the better teams. The good teams that retain their talent only consider bettertrades if a key piece of their team is injured or retires. The stability is one of the big reasons these teams remain at the top of the league each year.