Panos wrote:If Kanter had gone to London and been assassinated, would the Knicks have been awarded a trade exception?
It would not be a trade exception. It would fall under the wider umbrella of the Disabled Player Exception. Which is far more extensive in the actual CBA compared to the brief summary from Larry Coon. This was also expanded when the Chris Bosh Rule was negotiated in the last CBA.
IIRC, if this not in an offseason, if the player has played in more than 10 games, it's a proration of his contract for the current season. That proration is weighed against the Non Tax MLE and the lesser is the amount you can apply for, but the Chris Bosh Rule requires a set of league approved physicians to rubber stamp either the injury or death. While the Knicks have their own medical staff, the league needs it's own separated from any franchise for transparency and to be seen as objective. A death on non US/non Canadian soil starts to make this very complicated.
Since pro sporting events are seen as high profile target zones, this now becomes an issue for DHS and MI5. And it's a headline grabber so now it impacts the international basketball community and eventually the IOC. Professional sports are informally understood to be a neutral zone for other political matters. Since it would be on London soil, you've actually crossed into total fucking James Bond territory. As MI5 only deals with domestic issues. Outside of home soil, it's MI6. Likely supported by the SAS as an operational wing. Shit like this has an impact on international business, investment in said country, tourism and it's role in the international sports community ( There's big money in hosting certain events and you won't get them if you can't keep visiting athletes safe) So in turn, someone would need to get hit hard as fallout. This would be a total fuckup of epic proportions.
If something happens to Kanter and there is a body, the Knicks would have to wait for NBA league doctors to actually verify that Kanter is dead up close. They might have to wait a long ass time depending on what DHS and MI5 decides to do about it.
If something happens to Kanter and there is no body, the Knicks would be stuck. There's nothing to verify. But any team would be stuck in this situation. Sadly this would be the far more likely scenario in a tree of unlikely overall scenarios.
IF a team gets the exception, they can spread it out. The Knicks could sign 2-3 players if they wanted as long as it does not exceed the max aggregate value of the exception for that season.
If any of this actually happened, you couldn't get Hollywood to write a movie more totally fucked up than this scenario. People fucking dying left and right over Enes Kanter.
Well, let's hope it never happens to the NBA, Kanter or anyone in the pro sports community.