0 of 5

Matt Slocum/Associated Press

Sign-and-trade transactions are not a staple of NBA free agency. To call them rare would be an understatement. They're useful in theory but complex and restrictive in practice.

Chief among their limitations is the near absence of upside for players. Sign-and-trade contracts do not allow them to land full-bird deals. They can span no longer than four years and only include up to five percent raises, making them indistinguishable from offers any new team can peddle.

These agreements can still be useful when a free agent wants to join a capped-out squad, but superstar sign-and-trades are inherently bogged down by the "Base Year Compensation" clause in the collective bargaining agreement. As Larry Coon wrote in his CBA FAQ:

"If a team re-signs its Larry Bird or Early Bird free agent in order to trade the player in a sign-and-trade transaction, the player's new salary is greater than the minimum, he receives a raise greater than 20 percent and the team is at or above the cap immediately after the signing, then the player's outgoing salary for trade purposes is either his previous salary or 50 percent of his new salary, whichever is greater. The team receiving the player always uses his new salary."

Let's use Jimmy Butler (player option) as an example. If he's maxed out as part of a sign-and-trade, he counts as a $32.7 million inbound salary for his new team, but only as $20.4 million—his 2018-19 cap hit—in outbound value for the Philadelphia 76ers. This creates an obstacle in any theoretical negotiation because Philly cannot accept more than $25.7 million in returning money without adding another player to the deal.

Further complicating matters, teams that receive players in sign-and-trades cannot be above the luxury-tax apron afterward. That's a problem when trafficking in a market of capped-out teams.

Certain liberties will be taken as we navigate these many obstacles. For instance, there may be players with max deals coming that are too enormous to work around realistically. Although these may essentially be no-gos for sign-and-trade purposes when the time comes, any ideas with these as the centerpiece will be proposed as opt-in-and-trades—a la Chris Paul in 2017.