There's a portion of Cleveland fans on social media who want the Cavaliers to trade for LeBron James.
How fun would that be? King James back with the Cavs to potentially end his career. There'd be nothing like it.
Except, well, it can't happen.
The NBA's rules aren't set up to allow that specific deal to happen because of the cap situation the Cavs already find themselves in.
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Can the Cavs trade for LeBron James?
Essentially, the league's second apron of the salary cap rules will prevent the Cavaliers from completing any sort of trade for LeBron from the Lakers this season.
The second luxury tax apron is an amount in the salary cap that has prohibitive penalties if your team's salary is over it, which the Cavs happen to be.
Once in the second apron, a team can't take back more salary than it sends out in a trade, and it also can't aggregate multiple outgoing contracts to match incoming salary.
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That last point is key. James is making $52.6 million this season. The Cavs have no one making that much.
And since you can't aggregate (combine) contracts to match due to the second apron restrictions, there is no way for the Cavs to complete a legal trade for LeBron.
Cleveland could conceptually shed a lot of salary and then try to make a deal, but that's not feasible.
LeBron has a full no-trade clause, and he'd probably waive it for Cleveland, but the Cavs have no way to make that happen.
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