_AIJ_ wrote:When does trades officially start? After the finals or do they have a specific date?
Officially, trading re-opens the moment your team is eliminated from the playoffs. The February trade deadline is in place to keep teams from altering the playoffs by making a last minute addition. Teams are allowed to trade any player that has guaranteed money next year. Minnesota could make a trade today, even James Johnson is he picked up his player option. Unofficially, teams seem to wait until the playoffs are over, to avoid distracting fans from a highly viewed and profitable playoffs.
Trading also closes during the moratorium, which used to be a week long chance for NBA bean counters to calculate the revenues from last season, and set a number for next season’s salary cap, lux, MLE, etc. Recently there has been talking of shrinking this week down to a day or two, as modern methods pretty much allow the accountants to have a very accurate guess far earlier.
I will mention that there are several unofficial starts to the trade season. Draft night. The first couple weeks of free agency. The last few days before the deadline. But we occasionally see trades come in between. David Kahn’s first move was a trade a few weeks before the draft of Randy Foye and Mike Miller for the #5 and an expiring. Too bad it was all downhill from there for that guy!