Reason #2 – It isn’t easy to match the salary
Because of trade rules under the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, you have to bring back 125% of the salary that a team sends out.
So, for example, as Dame earns $39,344,970 in the 2021/22 season, a team that wants to trade for him would need to send a minimum of $31.74 million.
If a player on the other team doesn’t earn that salary, they can put in a combination of players, but it gets tricky. If the Blazers are, say $2 million into the luxury tax and want to shed some salary to get out of the tax, then they would need to bring back an exact amount of salary.
This would be the same for the team the Blazers traded with. They would need to send an exact amount of salary to stay out of a tax if they were close to it. If you don’t trade for a player with the $31.74 million salary, ( as above, these max players are tough to find available in a trade ), you need to find that minimum amount or an amount to stay under the tax by combining salaries. Not an easy task.
Dame earning $40 million per season makes salary matching in a trade, very difficult.