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Old 07-01-2019, 04:29 PM   #48
octothorp
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sidney Crosby's Hat View Post
Me too. I've probably googled "trade exception" 10 times over the years but I still don't really understand what it is or how it works.
Exceptions are ways to go over the cap. Normally teams that are over the cap (or planning to be over the cap soon) don't want to lose salary, because once they lose it they can't easily add it again (beyond giving raises to players they already have).

For example, the cap is currently $109 million, and let's say the Raptors are $15 million over, at $124. They can make a trade with roughly matching salary going in and out, (let's say $20 million), and stay $15 million over.

But let's say they want to make a trade with a team that has cap space, and trade that $20 million player without taking salary back (maybe just a draft pick). Now they've reduced their salary down to $5 million under the cap. This means that even though they lost a $20 million player, they've only got $5 million of cap-space to replace him with.

This is where trade exceptions come in. Our trade in which we lost a $20 million player created a $20 million trade exception for the Raptors. This means that for the next year, it can be used to take on additional salary in trades. Maybe we trade a $10 million player for a $30 million player. Maybe we sign-and-trade to acquire a $20 million player.

There are a couple caveats to how they're used: they can be used only in single-player trades (ie. one-for-one trades, or one-for-draft-picks/cash trades); and you can't use multiple trade exceptions in a single trade. But you can use one exception multiple times... ie. you could carve up that one $20 million exception to facilitate a couple trades in which you take on about $10 million extra salary in each.
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