RealGM

Hi, everyone:

Hoping someone can clear this up for me. I know ESPN isn't exactly 100% reliable for details such as this, but they currently show the Knicks as having a $1.3M trade exception as a result of the Renaldo Balkman trade.

This can't be right, can it? They took back two players with unguaranteed contracts (Taurean Green and Bobby Jones), then cut them. There's no TPE as a result, is there? Is this just an error on ESPN's part?

Thanks in advance.

(Addendum: I suppose one possibility is that they had a pre-existing TPE from another trade...then the Knicks and Nuggets swapped TPEs in order to swap players, thus creating a "new" exception for the Knicks which would last another calendar year moving forward. Does anyone know if that was the case?)

The minimum salary exception isn't just a thing for signing people. It can also be used to acquire players in trades. Therefore, when the trade was broken down into the ideal way for New York, Jones and Green's incoming salaries were covered by the minimum salary exception, leaving Balkman's salary essentially going out for no return (because, as before, the incoming salary was all minimums), and that's where the TPE came from.

^Ah, interesting. Thanks for your help, Sham.