Albert’s family is watching the 2026 NBA Draft in the living room, with the commissioner announcing a trade, while. Said trade involves a draftee, taken outside the top 10, being traded away on draft day.

  “Something’s not right. Why do draftees get traded on draft day, rather than the picks?” Albert whines in front of his younger sister Heather, a rising eighth grader.

  “I never saw this happening in football, where they either trade picks for other picks, or picks for players, but not players taken earlier in that same draft!” Albert’s dad points out to his children.

  “You two don’t know anything about how it works in the NBA!” Heather shouts.

  “The NBA off-season is so complicated: you have stuff such as sign-and-trade, mid-level exceptions, and all these other things I don’t understand at all! How you understand all these things is beyond me!” Albert’s mom whines in Heather’s direction, before gasping. “And now you have this happening?”

  “Before we talk about exceptions, we all need to remember that there are five cap levels, and also that each of these carry their own set of restrictions on teams! It’s not like the NFL, where you have a hard cap, but the cap is called soft because of all the stuff you mentioned!”

  “Like I don’t understand anything about the cap itself, so has the salary cap anything to do with the draft-and-trade?” Albert asks his sister.

  “Not always. The Stepien rule prevents teams from trading away first-round picks in consecutive years, and sometimes a trading partner has someone they really need, but can’t trade away the pick itself for him. Once the selection is made, however...”

  And typically package the draftee with someone else, if allowed to by their cap situation, Heather thinks as the next pick is about to be made. The room goes quiet when it happens.

  However, after the next pick is made, the discussion resumes, with Heather believing the team making that pick might get into trouble by signing him.

  “I can’t believe they took that guy! Now they can’t sign him without hitting the second apron!” Heather comments on the team who just picked at #23. “They’re better off stashing the guy, like so many in the bottom third of the first round!”

  “You play basketball, so you have an idea of where so-and-so fits on the roster, but I didn’t think it would lead you to become interested in what happens in the front office!” Albert’s dad only realizes now what’s happening with Heather.

  “I did this for you, Heather. But I didn’t think you would be yakking about the second apron!” Albert is about to yell at her sister. “What the hell are aprons, and what makes the second apron so horrible that you don’t want to hit it?”

  “And… stashing? What does that mean for a draftee?” Albert’s mom asks her daughter.

  It seems all so sudden: up to this point, Heather was seemingly content to play what she calls a big in basketball because she’s tall and she’s good at it. Much like I play defensive tackle for the Venomous Agendas, Albert muses while his sister is about to fume at him.

  “I watched the NFL Draft a few months ago, with you and dad, why can’t you make an effort and watch the NBA one?” Heather yells at him.

  “In comparison to the NBA, the NFL CBA is way simpler to do trades under. You have your salary cap, you have a max salary per player, but not nearly as many exceptions, nor cap levels!” Albert’s head is about to spin. “Every time they talk about cap exceptions or aprons, I’m lost!”

  “Did you take a hit too many?” she yells at him while pick #24 is in. “Because of you, we’re missing pick twenty-four!”

  “Stop it, Heather! Don’t make fun of my football position!” Albert’s tone of voice leaves no doubt for his state of mind.

  “With the twenty-fourth selection in the 2026 NBA Draft...” the commissioner announces on air, which makes Heather go quiet.

  What the kids are missing is that the main complexity of the NFL’s transactional aspect is what counts towards the cap hit and what doesn’t. For a given season, a player’s guaranteed salary is charged to his cap hit, but bonuses are charged over the life of the contract even though they aren’t necessarily paid that way. If a player is cut, all bonuses not already charged to the cap must be charged to the team’s cap the year of the cut, Albert’s dad keeps to himself while not wanting to interrupt the pick. Then again, he never sought to understand what went into a cap hit, beyond “better players tend to have bigger cap hits”.

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  “You haven’t answered what stashing a player means to a team!” Albert’s mom asks her daughter shortly after pick #24 is in.

  “Stashing a player means that you keep his rights but you know he needs to develop some before he makes the big team... Late first-rounders usually have a good chance of making the NBA at some point in their careers, just not necessarily the team that drafted them, nor are expected to amount to much in the pros...”

  “Right: it’s not like football where there are so many positions to staff and even a pick in the final quarter of the first round can still make an impact from day one!” Albert comments on how attitudes towards a late first-rounder differ from football.

  “Albert, if you thought that the NBA Draft was hard to follow, free agency is going to be worse! Just don’t get hit too hard or too often until then!”

  “I get it, being a defensive tackle means I hit and get hit a lot... But it’s getting annoying: you seem to be implying that I’m dumb because I play DT!” Albert yells at his sister.

  “Yeah, Al never implied you were fat because you’re poised to start as a big next year on VA’s middle school basketball team!” their mom scolds Heather. “In the future, please be more considerate towards your brother, but for now, please apologize to Albert!”

  “I just wish him to stay safe on the field!” Heather retorts to her mom.

  “That’s not how I feel!” Albert keeps yelling at his little sister. “Fine, I’ll watch the rest of the first round tonight with you!”

  While Albert still feels like he doesn’t understand a whole lot about trades in the NBA, later into the night, when the team picking at #28 announces another trade:

  “We have a trade to announce...” the commissioner announces on air.

  Albert briefly blanks out, because he doesn’t know who either draftee is. When he snaps out of it, the trade announcement ends with one statement that stings him:

  “...and cash considerations!”

  “Draft rights, and now cash considerations? Are cash considerations the way to go to get teams to move up or down the draft?” Albert asks, rolling his eyes.

  “Yes. Teams can’t trade picks in the current year when the draft is underway; the deadline to do so is a few hours before the draft’s start. But I already told you that, once the pick is made, the draftee becomes tradable!” Heather raises her voice. “It’s the NBA equivalent of those draft-day picks-for-picks trades you’re familiar with!”

  Usually, teams drafting in the final quarter of the first round tend to aim for a championship in the short term, and needs cash to get there, or might feel like someone due for a raise is about to leave in free agency, and a draftee could plug the hole left behind, Heather keeps to herself, not trusting her brother to understand what motivates contenders to trade draftees away on draft day.

  “In football, trading picks for picks can end up being a giant poker game on draft day, and often both about potential draftees as well as whether to move from one’s current draft position!” their dad comments on picks-for-picks trading. “FOMO often drives a lot of teams to trade when on the clock!”

  It will soon end. I had enough of Heather yakking endlessly about trading in the NBA! And of her making fun of my football position on top of that! Albert ruminates as the thought of the NBA free agency period starting just a few days from now sends a cold shiver down his spine. It makes me not want to be around Heather, at least until VA’s football preseason starts! But I must admit, Heather knows basketball.

  However, in both sports, fans are eagerly awaiting free agency period, since it’s a point in a season where they all pray their team signs a big-name player, or those pieces they feel they need if they can’t.

  “Honey, which poker game would you rather see play out on draft day, trading picks away without knowing who the other team wants with any degree of certainty, or trading draftees away, knowing exactly where they fit?” Albert’s mom asks her husband.

  “That, in a nutshell, is the difference in draft-day drama between the two leagues!” Heather exclaims.

  “And, of course, calling for certain people in the front office to be fired if a team messes up a trade or pick! Usually a lottery pick...”

  You have extra picks to make up for the loss of players in free agency in football, and the infamous JC-2A picks, so while there are technically 7 rounds, some years, there are more than 8 rounds’ worth of picks, so no, NFL trading is not as simple as our son made it out to be, Albert’s dad ruminates while his wife still tries to formulate an answer to which draft-day poker game she would find more interesting.

  “I wouldn’t say one is better than the other, only that basketball’s ends quicker. Especially since, in basketball, expectations for draftees decline sharply, as Heather said earlier, long before the final quarter of the first round!”

  “Exactly: even I don’t expect much from the second round! I might not even watch it live myself tomorrow... Sure, you can tell me about Jokic being the best second-rounder in Nuggets history, but Jokic is an outlier! If you thought that late first-rounders mostly grew into role players or end-of-bench ones, a late second is effectively worthless!”

  “What do you mean, a late second is essentially worthless?” Albert rolls his eyes.

  “If, in the coming days, you see a player traded away for a top-fifty-five protected pick, and his new team isn’t a clear championship contender...”

  “Enough!” Albert yells at his little sister. “I had to endure trading mumbo-jumbo all night!”

  “You could then say the player’s worthless. Speaking of worthlessness, I made an effort to understand your sport. You’re a worthless brother until you do the same for me!”

  “I’ll show you!”

  All my knowledge of basketball came from playing it in PE. If learning more about the NBA CBA is what it takes to get along with my family again... so be it, Albert gets a late flash.