Ahead of the NBA’s 2025 trade deadline, it’s worth keeping in mind which teams hold traded player exceptions that could come in handy to grease the wheels on an in-season deal.
As we explain in our glossary, a traded player exception allows a team to take on salary in a trade without sending out any salary in return. The amount of the exception (plus $250K for non-apron teams) is the amount of salary the team is permitted to take back without salary-matching – either in a single deal or in multiple trades – for one year.
For instance, a team with a $10MM trade exception could acquire a player earning $4MM and a second player earning $6MM without having to worry about sending out any outgoing salary.
In recent years, sizable traded player exceptions have served as wild cards that helped accommodate both pre-deadline and offseason deals. For example, after creating a $9.5MM trade exception when they sent Royce O’Neale to the Suns ahead of the 2024 trade deadline, the Nets used that TPE to acquire Ziaire Williams and a future draft pick in an offseason trade that allowed Memphis to shed some salary.
Many trade exceptions expire without being used, but as our tracker shows, there are several sizable ones available this season that could be useful when trade season begins in earnest.
Here are the 15 biggest trade exceptions around the NBA for now, along with their expiry dates in parentheses:
- Atlanta Hawks: $25,266,266 (7/7/25)
- Brooklyn Nets: $23,300,000 (7/7/25)
- Chicago Bulls: $17,506,232 (7/8/25)
- Dallas Mavericks: $16,193,183 (7/7/25)
- Memphis Grizzlies: $12,600,000 (2/3/25)
- Washington Wizards: $12,402,000 (2/10/25)
- New Orleans Pelicans: $9,900,000 (7/7/25)
- Minnesota Timberwolves: $8,780,488 (7/7/25)
- Portland Trail Blazers: $6,875,000 (7/7/25)
- Miami Heat: $6,477,319 (1/23/25)
- Sacramento Kings: $6,341,464 (6/30/25)
- Memphis Grizzlies: $6,133,005 (7/21/25)
- Sacramento Kings: $5,893,768 (7/8/25)
- New Orleans Pelicans: $5,722,116 (1/17/25)
- Denver Nuggets: $5,250,000 (7/7/25)
A number of these trade exceptions are more likely to be used next offseason, when teams could have more cap flexibility, than during the current season, when so many clubs are within spitting distance of the luxury tax line or a hard cap.
For example, using even a small portion of that $25MM+ exception during the season would push the Hawks‘ team salary into tax territory, but with several contracts coming off their books next summer, they’d be in a better position to take on a big salary at that time.
The exceptions that expire before next offseason are the ones to watch more closely during the season. That $12MM+ Wizards TPE is especially intriguing, since Washington is one of the few teams with plenty of breathing room below the tax threshold. They could use nearly all of that exception at the deadline and still avoid becoming a taxpayer.
The two TPEs listed in italics can’t be used at all, since the Heat are currently operating over the first tax apron, while the Timberwolves are over the second apron. Apron teams are prohibited from using trade exceptions that were generated during the prior season (like Miami’s) or that were created by sending out a player via sign-and-trade (like Minnesota’s).
It’s worth noting that some of these exceptions may be used in a deal that could otherwise be completed using salary matching. For example, a team with a $12MM trade exception that swaps one $10MM player for another could use the exception to take on the incoming player and create a new $10MM exception using the outgoing player.
Given tax and apron considerations, we may see some deals along those lines during the season, since using a TPE in that manner would allow a team to essentially roll it over for another year.