The Two Sides of Trading (Pt. 2)

As a follow-up to last night's post, I thought I'd examine the reasons why the NBA is a trade league while the NFL is not. As I see it, there are two main factors: First, the NBA has guaranteed contracts while the NFL doesn't. Because of this, NBA teams are often saddled with undesirable players with undesirable contracts and they're much more eager to get rid of them via trade. NFL teams can simply cut their unwanted players, negating the need for trades.

Secondly, in the NFL, draft picks are plentiful, valuable commodity while NBA draft picks are scarce and often worthless. Because there are seven rounds of an NFL draft, each with a commonly-agreed-upon value, draft picks are used as currency whenever one team wants to trade one of their players. In the NBA, only lottery picks have significant value, meaning that value for one player can truly only be found in another player (or his contract). So which system is better? I'd side with the NBA, not just because trades increase fan interest, but also because GMs, without the luxury of cutting bad contracts, have to pay long-term consequences for their poor personnel moves.