NBA:Trades

NBA RealGM — League Rules

Teams may trade players and picks. Every team involved must accept, and the Trade Approval Board (TAB) votes it through.

What a trade needs

Before it can be voted on, a posted trade must have:

• Every player's full name — first and last
• Every player's contract — salary and years
• Acceptance from every team involved
• Reasoning from every team involved — a short statement of what you are trying to achieve

There is no limit on how many teams can be in a trade. A deal with three or more has an extra posting requirement.

Approval

TAB approval is a race to 3:

3 TAB members approve	Trade approved
3 TAB members deny	Trade denied

If one or more TAB members are involved in the trade, a majority of the uninvolved members decides instead.

The deadline

No trades once week 17 concludes.

The test at the buzzer is whether the trade is posted and accepted by every team involved. If it is, the trade is alive and TAB may vote after the deadline — a trade cannot fail because approval was slow.

A missing acceptance at the deadline kills the trade.

What moves with the player

Contracts transfer unchanged. Salary and years are exactly what they were — a trade never reprices a player.

Re-sign tags do not transfer. A player carrying [RS] becomes [RSBO] on his new team:

• The trading team's re-sign tag reopens immediately
• The acquiring team spends none of its own 3

Every team must be under the salary cap after the trade. The cap binds at all times, and a trade is no exception.

Trading picks

Draft picks can be traded whenever trades are open, up to two years out. The window moves forward a year at each check-in: the check-in before a summer's draft opens the picks two drafts later.

2nd-round picks are traded like any other.

How to post

Every GM's forum page and Discord profile are linked from their team's tab on the league spreadsheet — that is how you reach someone to propose a deal.

Once agreed, create a topic in the NBA: Trades forum, titled with the teams involved — Sonics/Bullets. List what each team receives under its own heading, one asset per line, then post your acceptance and your reasoning:

Sonics receive:
Dale Ellis (SEA - SG) $1,420,400 (2028, 2029x)

Bullets receive:
Michael Adams (DEN - PG) $500,000 (2027)
2028 2nd Round Pick (SEA)

Sonics Accept

Adams is a stud, but I'm thin on the wing, so I'm willing to package
the extra pick with him to get Ellis.

Every other team then posts its own acceptance and reasoning in the same thread. Once all of them are in, TAB votes.

The reasoning is what a TAB member reads to understand what each side is doing — a deal that looks lopsided often is not, once both teams have said what they are building toward.

Three or more teams

Mark every player and pick with the team it is coming from, so each leg of the deal is unambiguous:

Sonics receive:
Dale Ellis (SEA - SG) $1,420,400 (2028, 2029x) -- FROM CHARLOTTE

Bullets receive:
Michael Adams (DEN - PG) $500,000 (2027) -- FROM SEATTLE

Bobcats receive:
2028 2nd Round Pick (SEA) -- FROM WASHINGTON

Note that the two markers on a pick do different jobs: (SEA) is whose pick it originally is, and -- FROM WASHINGTON is the team trading it away.

Once approved, update your roster post — including the tag change if a re-signed player was involved.

If the trade puts you above 15 active players in-season, post the waiver after the trade goes through.

See also

• Contracts — what transfers with the player
• Re-Signing — how a trade moves a re-sign tag
• Salary Cap — staying under after the trade
• Draft — the picks you can trade
• Rosters — updating after a trade