I keep hearing about teams wanting to acquire “ending contracts” in trades. What are they, and why are they so valuable?
Sometimes teams get locked into long-term financial commitments from which they later want to extricate themselves. Typically this is when they have high-priced and long-term contracts, but have no real hope of competing for a title before those contracts run out. These teams are usually left without any hope of having cap room with which to sign free agents, and may be facing large luxury tax payments as well (see question number 16). But if such a team were to trade a high-salaried player for a player with a similar salary but in the last year of his contract, then they would be able to rid themselves of that financial obligation the following summer. This could get the team below the luxury tax level, or possibly create enough cap room with which to sign a productive free agent. This means that some players who aren’t necessarily trade-worthy from a basketball standpoint become valuable trade commodities from a financial standpoint. A competing team might be able to parlay mediocre
