BOLT: The Extended Vacation Clause

There's some outcry in the NBA surrounding the trade and re-acquisition of Zydrunas Ilgauskas. And I can't deny them the right to complain. Something certainly seems fishy about this type of activity. It's happened in the past, including with Detroit and Antonio McDyess in the Iverson-Billups deal not long ago. But it is certainly a tough loophole to eliminate.

The current system allows an NBA team to trade a player, then after the team he was traded to buys out his contract, the player waits 30 days and can be acquired by any team, including the team that originally traded him.

Now the two obvious ways to fight this action would be:

1. To disallow the buyout of traded players.
2. To disallow a team from reacquiring a player that it traded.

Neither one of these options seems fair in the grand scheme of things. The NBA trade deadline is commonly used (especially in recent years) to discard salaries for upcoming free agency activity. This is a legitimate practice, and I don't think it would be proper to block the ability of teams to do this. The hope of free agency is what is keeping certain NBA fan-bases (The Knicks) afloat.

It also doesn't seem proper to disallow only one team from acquiring the bought out player, even if that team is the one that traded him in the first place. There is something inherently unfair in making that particular adjustment.

But again, the process as a whole certainly seems like it should be a violation, despite the parts each seeming legal in and of themselves.

Perhaps the solution lies in something paralleling the waiver system in Major League Baseball. This allows the lesser teams a better chance at acquiring players available upon their release. The problem of course would be what to do if the player simply could not agree on a contract with these other teams, because his preference is to go to a team which is contending. There could be something in a waiver system, but it require a complex change in the NBA free agent landscape.

Again, curious about your thoughts on this issue.

-APT