Ben Simmons did a year ago and was willing to sit out an entire season (and cost himself eight figures of salary) to get it done. Kevin Durant is doing it right now.
Superstars demanding a trade early in their new contracts has become an NBA thing.
Adam Silver is not a fan of it, and the NBA Commissioner said it would be part of the just-started CBA negotiations.
“This needs to be a two-way street,” Silver said Tuesday in Las Vegas after the Board of Governor’s meeting. “Teams provide enormous security and guarantees to players and the expectation is, in return, they will meet their end of the bargain. I’m realistic that there’s always conversations that are going to go on behind closed doors between players and their representatives and the teams. But we don’t like to see players requesting trades, and we don’t like to see it playing out the way it is...
“It’s one of those issues that as we move into this collective bargaining cycle, which we are just beginning now, we intend to discuss with our Players Association and see if there are remedies for this. Again, as I said, it will never be the case when players won’t be unhappy in certain situations, but we don’t want to see it playing out the way it is now.”
Silver argued the players’ union should have some interest in the issue because a move like Simmons last season impacted every other player on the 76ers. Same with the Nets right now.
However, the union will not go for anything restricting player movement. Some around the league have suggested that if a player on a supermax asks out, the value of his contract should drop to the max level that other teams could offer (removing the larger raises and the fifth year off the table). Good luck getting the union to agree to lowering player salaries, even in these circumstances.
There is no easy answer to this, and the league’s offseason chaos has become part of its identity. However, the owners understandably will be looking for a way to assert more control and keep the player they have under contract in house.