Before I Let Go No-trade clauses are rare in the N.B.A. — even after what happened to Blake Griffin last season. Carmelo Anthony still owns the one from his Knicks contract, for now. But Dirk Nowitzki may be the only player with it when the new season begins. Mike Stone/Reuters Marc Stein High on the list of free-agent curiosities this summer, at least for me, was the fate of the no-trade clause. It admittedly doesn't compare with actually seeing where LeBron James, Paul George or DeMarcus Cousins would end up — or even where Isaiah Thomas landed. But I can't help but think back to late January, when Blake Griffin was dealt to the Detroit Pistons just six months after signing a five-year, $171 million contract with the Los Angeles Clippers. The ensuing assumption, at the time, was that pushing for a no-trade clause would be a priority for the select few free agents eligible to negotiate one this summer and moving forward. What we've witnessed instead is a July that has featured virtually no discussion on the no-trade front. This is where it's important to remind everyone just how difficult it is to obtain a no-trade clause in the N.B.A. Players must possess eight years of service time and have spent at least four years, consecutive or not, with the team they're signing with — and can only have a no-trade clause added to a new contract. League rules prevent an NTC, as they're known, from being added to a mere extension of a previous contract. There were nonetheless a handful of free agents this summer who could have secured a no-trade clause in a new deal. Among them: DeAndre Jordan, Derrick Favors and Tony Parker. Ditto for Trevor Ariza, Nick Collison and even Dante Cunningham. Also in that club: LeBron James himself. So what happened? LeBron left the Cavaliers for the glamorous Lakers. The likes of Jordan (Dallas), Parker (Charlotte) and Ariza (Phoenix) likewise joined new teams in free agency, which cost them their no-trade eligibility. Collison, of course, retired in Oklahoma City. Darrell Arthur and Wilson Chandler are two more would-be free agents who would have met the 8-and-4 criteria had they chosen to pass up the final year of their contracts. But both players picked up their 2018-19 player options — and then both were promptly traded away by the Denver Nuggets. Favors is the only 8-and-4 man who stayed with his current team, but the generally chilliness of the summer market for all but the top-tier free agents forced him to settle for a two-year, $36 million deal with the Utah Jazz in which Year 2 is non-guaranteed. In a summer when teams held far greater leverage than the players, Favors' new contract predictably does not include a no-trade clause. As a result, Dirk Nowitzki — who is expected to soon finalize a new contract for his 21st consecutive season with the Dallas Mavericks — might be the league's only player with a full no-trade clause when next season starts. That's because Oklahoma City's Carmelo Anthony, who still has one as well, will soon forfeit the much-discussed NTC he received from the Knicks in the summer of 2014 as soon as he secures his looming exit from the Thunder and lands a new contract, most likely with the Houston Rockets. Miami's Dwyane Wade is the only obvious free-agent candidate still on the market who can join Nowitzki in the No-Trade Club. Wade, though, first must to decide if he's going to play for one more season, since he's said to be contemplating retirement at age 36. The same technically holds for Udonis Haslem, who is NTC-eligible but unsure of a return to the Heat at age 38. Yet there is one important footnote to add to this discussion, to be as thorough as possible, for those of you who enjoy the admittedly wonky subject of no-trade clauses as much as nerdy me: Given the rash of one-year deals we're seeing these days, as teams try to preserve maximum financial flexibility for the expected free-agent bonanza forthcoming in July 2019, we could end up with a bigger-than-usual handful of what are known as One-Year Birds. That's the term for players who sign a one-year deal with the team they played for in the previous season and cannot be traded without their permission because a trade would cost them their Bird Rights. Prominent One-Year Birds for the coming campaign who will possess a season’s worth of veto power include Boston's Aron Baynes, Minnesota's Derrick Rose, Philadelphia's J.J. Redick, San Antonio's Rudy Gay, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope of the Los Angeles Lakers — and a certain Kevin Durant in Golden State. It's also true that a restricted free agent can't be traded in the first season after signing an offer sheet — if his original team matches. This means Chicago can't trade Zach LaVine, who received an offer sheet from Sacramento that the Bulls matched, unless LaVine agrees. But that's basically it. Protection against getting shipped out in the sudden manner Griffin did, as much as players may want it, remains especially difficult to obtain. And maybe never more scarce.