NBA Trade Rumors: Toughest Contracts to Move Before the Deadline

Some teams are shopping players, but whether they will go anywhere or not is a different matter. Shopping bigger contracts is harder than ever with the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Cost matters now more than ever. 

Contracts that were signed under the old CBA have to be viewed differently than they were. The luxury tax is so high now that, even for the most profitable teams, the punitive effect of being deep in the luxury tax is prohibitive to carrying the largest contracts unless you are getting truly elite production from that player. 

While a team like the Lakers formerly could get away with being $20 million or more above the salary cap and only pay $20 million in taxes, now the same team could have to pay as much as $70 million in taxes. When a $20 million contract costs a team close to $100 million, it gets expensive for everyone.

Granted, teams will be able to retain a max-contract player, but the days of stockpiling them are over. That means teams are going to have to be judicious in who they pay that kind of money to and who they trade for.

There are three types of contracts that are going to be much harder to move than in the past because of the new CBA: large contracts of players past their primes, players who are overpaid and uninsured contracts.

Pau Gasol might have been an elite player when the Lakers acquired him, but he's not an elite player now. There are those who speculate that he could be moved for young players to build around, but that's not being realistic. Gasol has two years remaining on his contract after this year and will be making $38 million over those two years. That's nearly a third of the salary cap. 

It's hard to find an incentive for a team like Houston to give up Kyle Lowry and his entire future, along with a solid role player like Luis Scola, who is going to render a two-year return that is going to limit what else they can do in free agency. 

Gasol by himself leaves a team $39 million for the other 12 players on the roster. That's just a little over $3 million a player, and with the young, cheaper stars like Lowry or whomever is the key piece to acquiring gone, it's very difficult to see whee the other players are going to come from. 

Players like Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, Chris Paul and Kevin Love are worth max-contract money, but those are players whose best years are ahead of them—not behind them. 

The Atlanta Hawks are rumored to be shopping Joe Johnson, who has $90 million on his contract, but Johnson is simply not a $90 million player. Johnson will be making almost $25 million in 2016. He's due an average of $21.5 million per year over the next five.

Johnson is a good player, not a great player. He represents a class of signing we won't see anymore, i.e. a player who gets max-contract money simply to keep on the team. Trading for Joe Johnson is trading for the right to see 37 percent of your salary going to a player who isn't even All-NBA, much less an MVP-caliber player.

Then there is another kind of contract that is untradable: the uninsured contract. There has been some speculation that would see the Knicks swapping out Amar'e Stoudemire for Monta Ellis. Such a trade would demand that Golden State send back other(s) along with Ellis to work, but it isn't going to happen. 

Amar'e Stoudemire has an uninsured contract because of his history of knee problems. While eating a huge contract won't cost the receiving team in terms of the salary cap, it will cost the owner of the team in terms of having to pay the guaranteed contract. 

Stoudemire is owed $63 million over the next three years. That's a lot of money to throw out the window. 

The CBA is going to make some payers harder to move than in the past. The days of seeing teams get rid of bad contracts via trades are over. Don't expect to see any of these, or similar contracts, to be moved between now and the trade deadline.