Limit on the amount of salary that can be traded

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The TL;DR – Currently cash exchanges are allowed to be made within trades as long as they don't exceed a player's annual salary in any given year of the contract.

The proposal is to create a framework which limits the amount of cap space that can be traded on a sliding scale – from 100% in the current year, to 50% in the second year, and 25% in the third year, with no payments in years four or five.

These ratios match the cap hit cost to releasing a player after our free agency deadline each season. 

This would take effect from the opening of trading in the 2025 season.

The detail:

There’s not a great deal more to add that isn’t in the TL;DR. It wouldn’t affect any deals already made, and would come into effect from the start of next season to allow GMs time to prepare and make any deals up to our free agent deadline this season under the current rules. Trades would still be subject to leaguewide vote.

There are some potential benefits to a sliding scale, which include:

- It would provide more certainty in trade negotiations in terms of how much can be offered/requested to be paid on a deal.
- It would reduce the dependence on the veto process to ensure trades represent fair value where GMs have to interpret the value of large future cap payments.
- It would help prevent new GMs from making potentially costly decisions when trading future cap.
- It could lead to a greater rebalancing of talent – if a competitor needs to offload a particularly onerous contract they must retain more of it on their books and/or give up more in prospect/draft capital to offset the cost to a rebuilder.
- It helps to emphasize the importance of cap space and contract value leaguewide, which could potentially deflate free agent deals/extensions that ultimately need to be traded away in the first place.

There are also some downsides, including:

- More damn bureaucracy – the imposition of the new rule gives less flexibility to GMs and is an increased restriction on trade negotiations from our current position.
- The rule is created for a handful of edge cases rather than run of the mill deals – the majority of trades don’t include second or particularly third year payments.