Happy trade day, everyone! We made it!
For those unfamiliar with this particular piece of NBA salary-cap arcana, the calendar turned to Dec. 15 on Sunday, meaning the vast majority of players who signed in the offseason are now trade-eligible. In a related story, we had two trades!
In reality, there’s a small additional incentive for some of the action to happen on Sunday and Monday rather than drag on until closer to the trade deadline. (NBA front offices typically act like a more procrastinating version of the worst Christmas shopper you know, pushing any deal decision off to the last possible instant before rushing into a Circle K at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 24 with list in hand.) A little-known provision in this year’s collective bargaining agreement changes the normal “two-month” rule for trade aggregation to allow players who were traded on or before Dec. 16 to be aggregated again in the final two days preceding the Feb. 6 trade deadline. (Shout out to Forbes’ Bryan Toporek for first pointing this out.)
That could be one reason the Golden State Warriors opted to move now on a trade for Dennis Schröder. To review, The Warriors sent De’Anthony Melton — who only became trade-eligible when the clock struck 12:01 a.m. Sunday — two-way Reece Beekman and three second-round picks (from Atlanta in 2026 and 2028 and their own in 2029) to Brooklyn for Schröder and a Miami 2025 second-rounder that is top-37 protected.
Normally, the Warriors might have waited to get more complete answers on what the out-for-the-season Melton’s expiring deal could net them in a hunt for bigger fish, as they couldn’t have used Schröder in a similar trade. The Warriors almost certainly would need to aggregate three or four contracts for salary matching in any swap for a star-caliber player, which under the old rules they couldn’t have done with Schröder as one of the contracts. Now they can, so it’s no harm for them to snag a healthy guard now and figure out the blockbuster trades later.
The Nets also had some incentive to act sooner rather than later, although of a different sort. Quite simply, Schröder was a little too effective for the Nets’ needs, as Brooklyn is banking on a high lottery pick in this June’s loaded draft to reverse a down-to-the-studs rebuild. Maybe a 10-15 record as of Sunday morning doesn’t sound that impressive to you, but in the dystopia known as the Eastern Conference, it had them a half-game out of the No. 8 seed. Can you imagine doing all this and then picking 15th?!?!?
Schröder is 31 and won’t be part of whatever the Nets build, but he was having one of his best seasons as a pro (16.4 PER, 58.8 true shooting percentage). Brooklyn might reasonably have held out for a late first-round pick for him as draft compensation, were it not for the fact that the Nets kind of need to stop winning so much sooner rather than later. There are too many other teams that are too good at this tanking business for them to mess around much longer.
The Nets will still look at other moves with their vets (Dorian Finney-Smith and Cam Johnson chief among them), but replacing Schröder with Ben Simmons and some other dudes who can only sort of dribble should put them on firmer footing to achieve their, um, longer-term interests. (Incidentally, I doubt Beekman was a key to the deal, but his inclusion does give the Nets another real point guard.)
One other nerdy note: Based on comments by Brooklyn GM Sean Marks after the trade, it appears the Nets might take Melton into their non-taxpayer midlevel exception and create a new, slightly larger exception for $13 million for Schröder. Remember, that’s a new twist that teams can do this year. This decision wasn’t a no-brainer; while the Schröder exception is larger, it doesn’t pro-rate as the season goes on and lasts through the summer, and it also can’t be used to sign a promising two-way or G League addition to a long-term deal. The Nets also still have a gargantuan $23 million exception from the Mikal Bridges trade with New York. Functionally, neither will matter once the season ends, as the Nets project to have a bajillion dollars in cap room and won’t need their exceptions this summer.
Schröder is a very imperfect fit in Golden State, a shoot-first player in a pass-first system, but the Warriors’ offense was starving in the non-Curry minutes, and playing Brandin Podziemski as an on-ball shot creator was stunting his development. Nobody is saying he’s an ideal fit, but replacing an injured player with an active, productive one seems like a no-brainer for a team in win-now mode, especially at a net cost of two seconds. Again, the salaries are nearly identical, so that part doesn’t impact Golden State’s planning or apron status.
Cap nerds will also note that it was a trade of three second-round picks for one second-round pick, rather than just the Warriors handing Brooklyn two seconds. Why would they do this? Because the Warriors swapped a 2029 pick for one in 2025, a year when they currently don’t have a second-rounder. That matters because it allows the Warriors to “Gui Santos” their last roster spot next year, adding a cheap $1.27 million contract into the 14th roster spot as they manage the tax and aprons — barely half of what a veteran on a minimum deal would count against their salary book. (The Lacobs could care less about the actual financial difference; it’s the annual dance with the aprons that is the issue here.)
Speaking of nerdy cap points, while Schröder is likely a rental, the Warriors will have early Bird rights on him. That would theoretically allow them to start a new deal next year at 175 percent of his salary (or up to about $22.8 million) without needing cap space or exception money.
Schröder wasn’t our only trade, however. We also had a minor deal between the Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers that sent a second-round pick swap in 2031 to the Heat in return for big man Thomas Bryant. Bryant had fallen out of the rotation in Miami, while the Pacers have gone through backup bigs like Spinal Tap went through drummers, so these two were natural partners.
While Indiana could have possibly read the tea leaves in Detroit and waited on Paul Reed to become available (see below), Bryant gives them more “true center” size on a team that already had a small-ball five option with Obi Toppin. The fact that his contract can be aggregated at the deadline is another small inducement to getting the trade done sooner rather than later. The Pacers are technically $433,846 over the tax at the moment, which is a giant no-no in small-market Indy, but they will go back under if they waive the out-for-the-year James Wiseman’s partially guaranteed deal at any time before Jan. 10.
As for the Heat, they trim a ballooning luxury tax bill; while they have to replace Bryant’s spot on the roster after 14 days, they could likely promote two-way Dru Smith into his spot on a minimum deal and end up saving roughly half of Bryant’s tax hit. A second-round pick swap in 2031 might not sound like much, but getting literally anything in return for your dead weight is a win. The Heat will still be $13.5 million above the tax line and incur a $22 million penalty for a team that has been pretty meh on the court, which is another potential motivation for all the Jimmy Butler rumors you’re hearing. Exchanging his $48.8 million cap number for roughly $35 million in returning salaries gets Miami out of dodge.
Cap Geekery: How dare the Pistons cut Paul Reed
Setting aside the extent to which it offended me personally, Detroit waiving Paul Reed over the weekend had some serious cap nerd angles to it.
Reed was on the Pistons’ roster for a non-guaranteed $7.7 million, which would have become fully guaranteed on Jan. 10. However, the Pistons also went below the salary floor by $1.4 million when they waived him, requiring the Pistons to either immediately add a player who made at least that much or say goodbye to an eight-figure windfall from the league at year-end for teams below the tax line. This is a provision of the new CBA, and our first example of its usage.
Thus, the Pistons reacted on Sunday by signing guard Javante McCoy out of the G League; no salary figures have leaked yet, but it seems likely it’s for exactly $1.42 million.
The key here is that waiving Reed and signing a minimum contract on Sunday allowed the Pistons to slow their roll toward using too much of their $12 million in cap space before the trade deadline. Reed’s contract chewed up about $45,000 in cap room per day; the newly signed McCoy does so at just under $8,000 a day.
Sunday was also the first day that replacing Reed with a pro-rated veteran minimum deal would keep Detroit just above the salary floor. Detroit ended up $1.42 million below the floor after waiving Reed; the pro-rated veteran minimum is $1.44 million. (Note that it’s also possible Detroit could waive McCoy after two days and then re-sign Reed to a minimum deal once he clears waivers; the fact they signed one of their own G Leaguers rather than promoting a two-way player makes me think this is at least somewhat possible.)
By operating this way, Detroit heads into the trade deadline with $14 million in cap space rather than the $10 million it had with Reed on the books and still keeps itself above the salary floor.
Cup Geekery: Dealing with the schedule
It’s Oklahoma City versus Milwaukee on Tuesday in Las Vegas! Congratulations to the tournament tough Thunder and Bucks on surviving the NBA Cup crucible.
In the meantime, the rest of the NBA is dealing with the league’s efforts to Humpty Dumpty the schedule back together again coming out of the 10 days of relative downtime that the Cup schedule brought most teams. But there is some schedule weirdness going all around.
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Notably, the quarterfinal-loser Dallas Mavericks will end up with 42 true road games this year and just 40 home games if the league doesn’t alter the schedule. Last season, the NBA office did the Knicks a solid when they were in a similar position, by switching a late-season game from Detroit to Madison Square Garden to even the Knicks’ home-road split at 41 apiece (sticking the last-place Pistons with an extra roadie was less relevant to the competitive balance of the playoff race).
However, we’ve had no indication yet that a similar switcheroo is planned for the Mavs this year. Perhaps the league just wants to make sure a certain team takes a certain strategic direction before OK’ing it; by far the easiest switch available would be moving one of the two January games in New Orleans (either Jan. 15 or Jan. 29) to Dallas, but that’s an easier sell if the league knows for sure the Pels are drop-kicking the season.
Also notable is the fact that the Thunder will play for the Cup in Las Vegas on Tuesday then fly more than 2,000 miles to Florida for an Orlando-Miami back-to-back on Thursday and Friday. There isn’t even time to stop in Oklahoma for a parade if they win!
More seriously, it was inevitable that the schedule would have somebody playing a game far from Las Vegas on Thursday, when 26 of the league’s 30 teams are in action. But it seems like maybe the league office could have used a director of insight and foresight to see the Thunder’s scheduling was fairly likely to be an issue. This was the one team with the highest probability of being the West’s representative in Tuesday’s final, so jamming in a Florida trip on the first two days the league returned to action was fairly likely to become a problem. The other four teams with theoretical long jaunts to the East on Thursday if they had made the Cup final all were no-hopers (Utah, Charlotte, Chicago and Brooklyn), making the Thunder’s trip weirder by comparison. They are going to end up with an eight-day trip with a three-time-zone jump in the middle. On a positive note, they’ll at least get a five-day break once they return home, with two off days on either side of their Dec. 23 scrimmage against the Wizards.
For the Bucks, at least, there are no such issues; they’re one of the four teams who got the day off on Thursday and don’t return to play until Friday in Cleveland.
Prospect of the Week: Kam Jones, 6-4 senior PG/SG, Marquette
(This section won’t necessarily profile the best prospect of the week. Just the one I’ve been watching.)
The upcoming draft is all about the one-and-dones, but if there’s one older player who could break through the “freshman wall” and land in the lottery, it’s Jones. The senior will be 23 on draft night, which is a concern, but he also leads all NCAA perimeter players in PER despite a difficult early schedule, and some of his advanced stats are just goofy: a 16.4 BPM, nearly five assists for every turnover and 65.0 percent shooting on 2s.
What’s amazing is that Jones wasn’t even playing on the ball before this season, operating mostly as a secondary creator while current New York Knick Tyler Kolek ran the offense. Even then, his draft analytics indicators jumped off the page, with high rates of steals and assists to go with plus shooting numbers from every range.
This year, with the keys to the offense, he’s become sort of a collegiate James Harden. Jones is left-handed and left-dominant as a driver and has mastered the one-handed pass over his head to a popping big man at the 3-point line. However, what makes that so dangerous is his threat as a scorer (36.4 points per 100 possessions, with elite below-the-rim finishing at the cup), which forces teams to rotate extra defenders to cut off his drives and thus leverages his strength as a passer.
It’s not just pick-and-pops, either; Jones has other deliveries in his bag as well. What sorcery is this:
Watching Kam Jones is never boring. pic.twitter.com/8J7pzsZosc
— Caleb (@VolsAndDraft) December 6, 2024
I should note that Jones also has significant off-ball gravity; he shot 40.6 percent from 3 last season on high volume and is at 41.2 percent this season while flashing some Hardenesque stepbacks and sidesteps to get into his shot. Weirdly, he’s never been a particularly good foul shooter, making just 75.0 percent this season and 69.5 percent for his career.
Scouts have been skittish to fully embrace Jones because he doesn’t pop as an elite athlete. He also fouls too much with 4.8 personals per 100 as a guard; part of the reason Marquette lost to Dayton over the weekend was Jones’s second-half foul trouble. But his skill level is off the charts, and he should be a plug-and-play rotation player. Even in a draft this strong, and even with his age a factor, that skill set should start getting him looks once the top 10 or so players are off the board.
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(Top photo of Dennis Schröder: Steven Ryan / Getty Images)
