To be even a casual N.B.A. fan in 2019 means having to become a quasi accountant or a lawyer to decipher how the league’s salary cap works. It means understanding the difference between a soft cap and a hard cap, or the midlevel exception versus the biannual exception. There’s the Gilbert Arenas Provision, which is not to be confused with the Derrick Rose Rule, and definitely not the Allan Houston Rule.

The league’s collective bargaining agreement is arguably the most complex in professional American sports, and it spurs the most movement of elite players between teams. So if you have trouble understanding how it all happens, imagine what it’s like being in the N.B.A.’s salary cap group, the division of roughly 10 staffers who make sure the teams follow the rules. (To that end, the N.B.A. began investigating whether teams broke rules this summer with perks offered to free agents.)

The lawyers, former consultants and data analysts who enforce the intricate system serve as a continual resource for teams looking at their own cap situation: Do we have the space to sign X player? Or trade for Y? How many picks are needed? Can we sign Z without trading X first? This pod does the front office equivalent of setting screens: their plays don’t show up on the stat sheets but are crucial to the league’s results.