NBA Teams Are Permitted to Cheat the System

The NBA is under scrutiny for a lot of things that are out of their control. From an influx of young talent where many players tend to act their age, to their All-Star game festivities where trouble seems to always ensue.

While those are all prevailing issues, I would rather deal with one thing is under the control of the NBA. That is the fact that teams are able to trade away a player, have him released, and then sign him back again; thereby, effectively negating the player's on the court importance to the trade.

In 2005, the NBA instituted a rule to prohibit teams from operating in this manner because of an incident between the Celtics and Hawks. When the Boston Celtics orchestrated a trade that involved bring Antoine Walker back to Boston from his current team, the Atlanta Hawks, they put then Celtics Point Guard Gary Payton in the trade. However, the Celtics still wanted Payton and the Hawks did not, so essentially Payton was traded as a means of abiding by the salary cap rules and circumventing the system. So the Hawks traded Walker to the Celtics, took on Payton, waived him, and then the Celtics re-signed Payton only days later.

The rule that the NBA instituted was that a player had to sit out 30 days before re-signing with the team that traded him away. But such a rule does not stop the practice, and that practice is not in the best interest of the game.

Essentially, all this type of move does is fortify one team with talent, while the other team can gain cap space. In reality, it's not even a fair practice. Obviously, general managers with relationships with the right GMs at the right time are the ones that are going to sporadically benefit from this type of move. A GM who takes on that trade would have to be okay with seeing another team succeed in order to give his own team better positioning with the salary cap. Thus, a relationship between two GMs makes this type of move more likely to happen.

This is why this type of move may happen this season, with the big trade between the Dallas Mavericks and the New Jersey Nets that will bring Jason Kidd to Dallas. Jerry Stackhouse is said to be the player amongst the trade that will be traded from Dallas to New Jersey, waived, and then resigned by the Mavericks in time for a late season run and the start of the playoffs.

It would be ridiculous of the NBA to allow this to happen. There is not a GM out there that would be accepting of this practice, because it undermines the idea of trading. Just think if someone in your fantasy league made a trade with the league's last-place team, where they took on a few players of his, and released one for that last place team to pick up the player in waivers. That could completely alter the outcome of your league, just like this trade between Dallas and New Jersey, and any subsequent moves like this in the future, can alter an entire playoff picture. It's not right, and the league needs to readjust that rule so that players can be traded away and re-signed in the same season.