This list comprises all players drafted by NBA franchises,
who have not been subsequently signed by their teams, and whose rights
the team still owns. Unless the team relinquishes these rights - which
isn't done without both the players agent asking very nicely and the
team having no reason not to do so - these rights are held for as long
as the player continues to play professionally in leagues other than
the NBA. If that seems harsh, that's because it is.
Take
Andrei
Fetisov, for example. Fetisov was born in January 1972 (you
do the maths), and drafted in 1994. He will never, ever, ever join the
NBA. But why does
Milwaukee
continue to holds his rights, when they have no intention of signing
him at any point? Well, the answer is that they're using him for his
trade value. That probably seems like a stupid statement, given that
the draft rights of someone who will never join the league have about
as much use as a chocolate teapot. But it's not about the value of the
rights
per se; it's more of a technical issue.
In trades, both teams have to give up something. What that something
is, is up to them. A player, pick, or cash are options. But sometimes,
they don't want to (or can't) give those things up. So they have to
give up at least something, even if only as a token gesture. That's
where these scrubs draft rights become useful. They can act as the "something"
given up in a trade. A team can give up the draft rights to a player
as their outgoing half of a trade, and add in nothing more if they so
wish (or are so able).
That may sound like it's farfetched and would never happen. Yet it does.
It's rare, but it does occasionally happen. For example, when
Peja
Stojakovic left
Indiana
to sign with
New Orleans
in July 2006, Indiana asked New Orleans - with a cash incentive to convince
New Orleans to help them - to make the transaction a sign-and-trade,
rather than an outright signing. The act of doing this garnered Indiana
a mahoosive trade exception, which allowed them to promptly acquire
Al
Harrington, something that they could not previously have done
without the trade exception. However, the trade had Indiana giving New
Orleans some cash and Stojakovic, but New Orleans not giving out any
players or draft picks back to Indiana. (And why would they add any?
They're the ones doing Indiana the favour.) This meant that they had
to give up something else in the trade, and the thing that they wound
up forfeiting were the draft rights to
Andy
Betts, a beautiful and fantastic Englishman drafted in 1998
who won't play in the NBA. It's not much, but it's 'something'. And
that's all that they needed it to be.
Another example, from the 2008 trade deadline, saw the
Memphis
Grizzlies as the third team in a two team trade between
Houston
and
New Orleans (again).
The Rockets traded
Mike
James and
Bonzi
Wells to the Hornets for
Bobby
Jackson, in a move to get Houston under the luxury tax threshold.
However, New Orleans welcomed the new players (well, Bonzi, at least),
but they needed to give more outgoing salary to make the trade work
for them. So they needed to include the minimum salaries of
Adam
Haluska and
Marcus
Vinicius. Houston could afford to take back Haluska, but not
Vinicius as well, for that would put them back into the tax territory
and make the whole move rather pointless for them. In stepped Memphis,
who took on the salary cap number of Vinicius to make the trade possible,
and who then promptly waived him. However, to take on Vinicius, the
rules, as always, said that Memphis had to give up at least something
to make the deal work. The 'something' that they chose were the draft
rights to
Sergei
Lishouk, a no-name drafted in 2004 who did not pan out, and
who will never join the NBA. Had they not held Lishouk's rights for
all of these years, they wouldn't have been able to deal them, and thus
they wouldn't be a part of the trade.
(Why Memphis wanted to be in this trade in the first place is a bit
baffling, given that they didn't get any cash, players, or a pick for
their troubles, and just seem to have taken on someone else's committed
salary without getting any incentive to do so. Strange times. Also,
note that Memphis actually got back some draft rights, too - since Lishouk
was their only player whose unsigned draft rights they held, they asked
Houston for a new one back, and got those of
Malick
Badiane back. Badiane didn't figure to ever join the NBA, but
the 0.05% possibility of him doing so was ever so slightly more attractive
to Memphis than the 0% certainty of
Venson
Hamilton - another scrub whose rights Houston owns - ever joining,
and so that's why they asked for Badiane's instead. As it happens, Badiane
signed for training camp in 2008, and was waived quickly. This bracket
is getting longer and even duller so I'll shut up now.)
Very rarely, retaining these rights is worth something. For example,
in summer 2007,
Washington
bagged a first round pick from Memphis for the rights to
Juan
Carlos Navarro, and
San
Antonio used the value of
Luis
Scola's rights to be able to weasel their way under the luxury
tax.
Sacramento tried to
get a first round pick for
Dejan
Bodiroga back in the early part of this decade, and the
Bulls
could turn
Mario
Austin's rights into maybe something of value if they wanted
to do so. For the most part, though, these players attatched to these
draft rights are bobbins, and thus the value of the rights in trades
is used only as a technicality.
To retain these draft rights, all the team has to do is extend them
a contract offer by a certain date every season. With the exception
of unsigned first round draft choices, of which there are only six,
(
Frederic
Weis,
Tiago
Splitter Joel
Freeland,
Petteri
Koponen,
Serge
Ibaka and
Fran
Vazquez), these offers can be - and in practice, always are
- fully unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. (In the case
of the first rounders, the minimum is 80% of the rookie scale contract
for their draft slot that season, with the usual guarantees of any
rookie
scale contract. Don't try too hard to figure out what the hell I
just said, because you'll achieve nothing but boredom.) The players
can in theory sign these contracts if they want, but in practice they
don't. There's no point. In the case of the truly scrubby players, the
NBA franchise will just waive the player before their plane even arrives.
As such, these players rights continue to be held by the NBA teams for
as long as the player keeps playing in professional leagues other than
the NBA. (The teams lose the rights to the players exactly one year
to the day after the expiration of the player's most recent professional
contract. So if they keep playing, and the team keeps extending the
offers, then the player's rights continue to be held.)
It has happened before where such offers are accepted when they aren't
supposed to be. It rarely ends well. After the 2006 draft, the
Lakers
heavily advised their second round draft pick
J.R.
Pinnock to go to Europe, for there was no way he was going to
make the roster that year. They extended the minimum offer of the one
year unguaranteed minimum salary contract, but told J.R. not to bother
signing it, for it was futile. Pinnock didn't listen, signed the contract,
went to camp to battle for his place, lost, got waived, and now his
rights - and his ticket back to the NBA one day - are gone forever.
The same situation happened in summer 2007 with
Demetris
Nichols, who went to the
Knicks
despite them asking him not to, just to get waived. (His story has a
happier ending - he was subsequently claimed off waivers, twice, once
by
Cleveland and once
by
Chicago, and ended up
seeing out the season.) However, sometimes, it's been productive -
Chris
Duhon signed with the Bulls against their wishes, went to training
camp, won his roster spot fair and square (beating out the two rival
point guards with guaranteed contracts in
Jermaine
Jackson and
Mike
Wilks), and Duhon wound up starting most of the year for them
and earning himself a $9.6 million contract.
Carl
Landry of Houston also got a nice payday after taking the same
risk and succeeding (and should have gotten an even nicer one). But
generally, it's a stupid idea for stupid people, and so it is not common
practice to accept these offers.
Now go and do something more exciting.
