As the NBA trade deadline of March 25 fast approaches, it’s worth noting that there is a significant difference between an exceptional trade and a trade exception.
The former is something like, oh, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale for Joe Barry Carroll back in the day, arguably the most exceptional trade in league history (for the Boston Celtics, anyway).
The latter is a mechanism of NBA rules and regulations overseeing team-to-team transactions, a credit voucher of sorts that has a lot more to do with salary-cap accounting than it does with post moves or perimeter shooting.