The NBA's All-No-Trade Team (2022-23 edition)

Washington's Bradley Beal holds the NBA's lone full no-trade clause ... but as always there is a handful of players that, for fine-print reasons, can veto or avoid trades this season. Our rundown:

I know, I know. You want to know — immediately — who will be traded in the NBA between now and the Feb. 9 trade deadline.

Hopefully you'll agree that it’s also handy this time of the year for a refresher on which players absolutely can’t be traded (unless they provide their consent).

No. 1 on this season’s list is Washington’s Bradley Beal, who successfully negotiated the NBA’s only active full no-trade clause into the five-year, $251 million contract he scored in the summer from the Wizards.

You’ll recall that, on numerous occasions in recent years, we’ve published reminder pieces explaining why no-trade clauses in the NBA are so rare. They can be negotiated into new contracts by players who possess eight seasons of service time and four with the same team, but only into new contracts. Because star players often sign contract extensions before their eighth season — with the best of the best often able to sign extensions to those extensions — openings to add a no-trade clause to a contract are scarce.

Phoenix’s Deandre Ayton, meanwhile, holds a no-trade clause in Year 1 of his new four-year, $133 million contract because the deal was an offer sheet he signed as a restricted free agent with the Indiana Pacers. Once the Suns matched, Ayton was granted the ability to block any Suns attempt to trade him this season.

Then there is the annual small handful of players who, like Ayton, hold veto power over trades for one season only because they signed a one-year contract in the offseason with the same team they played for in the previous season. These players are generally referred to leaguewide as One-Year Birds. They can still be dealt before the Feb. 9 trade deadline but must give their consent to be included in any deal, because they would forfeit Bird Rights for the 2023 offseason upon switching teams.

Given that Trade Season is widely considered to have begun in earnest Thursday, when more than 70 of the free agents who signed during the 2022 offseason became eligible to be moved, we have compiled a new All-No-Trade Team on this Substack for your reference. With the usual trusty assistance from @KeithSmithNBA, here are 16 One-Year Birds who, for the rest of this season only, can keep themselves out of trades if they choose:

🏀 Ryan Arcidiacono (New York)

🏀 Bismack Biyombo (Phoenix)

🏀 Jevon Carter (Milwaukee)

🏀 Kessler Edwards (Brooklyn)

🏀 Drew Eubanks (Portland)

🏀 James Harden (Philadelphia)

🏀 Udonis Haslem (Miami)

🏀 Serge Ibaka (Milwaukee)

🏀 Andre Iguodala (Golden State)

🏀 Derrick Jones Jr. (Chicago)

🏀 Nathan Knight (Minnesota)

🏀 Wesley Matthews (Milwaukee)

🏀 Rodney McGruder (Detroit)

🏀 Mike Muscala (Oklahoma City)

🏀 Victor Oladipo (Miami)

🏀 Theo Pinson (Dallas)

Harden’s name leaps off that list, of course, because he’s still an All-Star-caliber player and thus a very atypical One-Year Bird. Yet his contract is considered a one-year pact because he holds a player option for Year 2 on the two-year, $68.6 million deal that helped create the financial wiggle room Philadelphia needed to add PJ Tucker, Danuel House Jr. and De’Anthony Melton in the offseason.

For this season, at least, The Beard can’t be traded for a fourth time without his say-so. (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)

Also …

There are 11 other players who can’t be traded before the offseason because their new contracts include various restrictions that preclude them from being dealt until after the Feb. 9 trade deadline.

For starters: Phoenix’s Devin Booker, Denver’s Nikola Jokić and Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns signed supermax extensions in the summer that make them ineligible to be traded until July.

Six more veterans are recent recipients of contract extensions that cannot be traded for six months and thus they likewise can’t be in play until after Feb. 9: Dallas’ Maxi Kleber, New Orleans' CJ McCollum and Larry Nance Jr., Cleveland’s Dean Wade, Golden State’s Andrew Wiggins and the Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James.

The other two players in this category are Dallas’ Kemba Walker and San Antonio’s Stanley Johnson, who just signed their new contracts and will not have been with their new teams long enough by Feb. 9 to be included in a trade this season.