As we explain in our glossary entry on salary aggregation, when a team trades for a player by matching salaries or using a cap exception, that team is typically ineligible to aggregate the player’s salary in a second trade for the next two months.
However, the NBA’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement includes one exception to that rule. A player traded on or before December 16 can always be “re-aggregated” on the day before – or the day of – that season’s trade deadline.
Any player who is acquired in a trade via salary-matching or an exception after Tuesday will be ineligible to be aggregated at this season’s Feb. 5 trade deadline.
We saw this rule in action during the 2024/25 season when the over-the-cap Warriors acquired Dennis Schröder from Brooklyn on December 15, then re-aggregated him at the February 6 trade deadline as part of their package for Jimmy Butler. If Golden State had acquired Schröder from Brooklyn on December 17, his salary couldn’t have been aggregated with those of Andrew Wiggins, Kyle Anderson, and Lindy Waters to match Butler’s incoming cap hit.
Now, there are two important points worth clarifying here. The first is what exactly it means to “aggregate” a contract.
Our glossary entry covers this rule in more depth, but aggregating a player’s salary with another salary means combining the two cap figures for matching purposes. For instance, a team operating over the cap and below the tax aprons can’t trade a $15MM player for a $35MM player, but that team could aggregate its $15MM player with a $20MM player in order to legally acquire the $35MM player.
Crucially, sending out multiple players in the same trade doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be aggregated. For example, if a team sends out a $15MM player and a $5MM player for a single player earning $15MM, there’s no need to aggregate the two outgoing salaries, since the $15MM player is enough to legally match the incoming $15MM salary on his own. So a player traded on Dec. 20 could still be flipped at the deadline in a multi-player trade — his salary simply couldn’t be combined with another player’s for matching purposes within that deal.
Only teams operating below the second tax apron are permitted to aggregate salaries, meaning this rule – and the Dec. 16 exception to it – won’t matter much for the Cavaliers, the NBA’s lone second-apron team this season. Even if the Cavs were to trade for a player today, that player couldn’t be aggregated at the deadline unless Cleveland was able to shed enough salary to move below the second apron.
The second point worth clarifying is that this restriction doesn’t apply to players who are acquired using cap room. The Nets are the only club currently operating under the cap, but they have more than $15MM in space, meaning they’re in a great position to trade for one or more players without sending out any matching salary.
Let’s say the Nets use their remaining cap room to acquire a player earning $14MM. Even if they make that trade on February 5, they could turn around and aggregate their new player’s salary with, say, Terance Mann‘s $15.5MM cap hit the very next day in order to acquire a player earning $30MM. Because the $14MM player was acquired using cap room and not using an exception or by salary-matching, Brooklyn wouldn’t face the two-month aggregation restriction.
There has been no indication that any trades are on the verge of being completed in the next 15 hours, but if they are, it’s worth keeping this rule in mind, since it could be a key reason for the timing of the move.