71. Can exceptions be combined when making trades?
To a certain extent. Teams can use different exceptions to acquire multiple players in the same trade if those players could also have been acquired individually using those exceptions. For example, a team may trade a $5 million player for a $5.5 million player and two 10-year veterans earning $1 million each on minimum-salary contracts. The minimum salary exception is used for the two minimum-salary players, and the $5.5 million player is acquired using the assigned player exception ($5.5 million is within 115% plus $100,000 of $5 million). This is allowed, since those players could have been acquired separately using those same exceptions.
What is not allowed is using two different exceptions for the same player. For example, a team cannot combine a traded player exception with the 115% plus $100,000 margin created by the assigned player exception to acquire a high-salaried player. Here is something that is not allowed: A team has a $5 million player and a $1 million traded player exception, and wants to add the $1 million trade exception to the 115% plus $100,000 margin from their $5 million player ($5,850,000), in order to trade for a player making $6,850,000. This cannot be done. The exception to this rule is that teams may combine multiple traded player exceptions together to form one larger traded player exception if the traded player exceptions are generated and consummated in the same trade.
(See question number 68 for more information on the traded player exception. See question number 69 for more information on the minimum salary exception.)
The legal combining of exceptions sometimes creates the appearance of teams getting away with illegal trades. For example, as detailed in question number 84 ), when a team is over the cap and acquires a player in trade, they cannot re-trade that player in combination with other players for two months. Technically, however, this applies only to players traded together using the same exception. For example, Orlando acquired Danny Manning from Phoenix (as part of a package for Penny Hardaway) on 8/5/99. They then traded Manning and Dale Ellis to Milwaukee on 8/19/99. This trade did not violate the two-month rule because they used the assigned player exception for Manning and a traded player exception for Ellis. Since the two players were traded using different exceptions it was not a technical case of aggregation to which the two-month restriction applied, and therefore the trade was legal.
