Cash-Strapped NBA Teams May Be Forced to Trade Stars
The COVID-19 pandemic has radically transformed almost every aspect of daily life. Millions of people in Canada and the United States have lost their jobs or have had to deal with significant financial losses over the past six months. Nobody is going to cry for the billionaires who own NBA teams, but even the super-rich are facing financial questions that could affect the upcoming 2020 NBA offseason.
In mid-September, The Athletic's Ethan Strauss put together a list of some of the NBA teams most adversely affected by the pandemic. The list included the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder, Miami Heat, Sacramento Kings, Indiana Pacers, New York Knicks, and Toronto Raptors.
"It’s based on some behind-the-scenes conversations and common sense regarding which industries have been walloped," he wrote. "Considering the complications of gauging finances from afar, it should not be treated as the absolute gospel."
Regardless of next year's salary cap — which will reportedly be around $109 million according to The Athletic's John Hollinger — some of those NBA teams might be forced to shed salary this summer.
"It'll be interesting to watch," ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski told Bobby Marks on the Woj Pod. "Teams who have cap space, even some of the smaller teams, they're not going to improve their team in free agency, you're going to see it perhaps in salary dumps where there are some very good players who teams, you know a team's got three of them and we can only keep two of them and we're going to move one out."
The prospect of seeing some highly paid players dumped this offseason was previously mentioned by ESPN's Brian Windhorst in July.
"As [NBA owners] face what some expect to be tens of millions per franchise in losses next season, some teams might have to slash payroll, perhaps trading players or electing not to aggressively pursue free agents," he wrote.
While free agency might be a little quieter than usual because of the pandemic, don't be surprised if some unexpected, highly paid players are traded when the 2020 offseason begins this fall.
