With six days to go until the trade deadline, plenty of teams will use plenty of willing reporters to build leverage.
So-and-so isn’t having a fire sale. Such-and-such won’t be traded. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The truth is that not many players are truly untouchable. For the right price, most players can be traded. If a new team wants the player badly enough, the new team can get him.
Only the best of the best of the best players will prompt the team that holds his rights to hang up without hearing the offer. In some situations, the cap consequences of trading a player will help push the decision to “no way” territory.
But there aren’t many who aren’t available, under any circumstances. And the teams that are spreading to word to easily manipulable members of the media that there’s no fire sale and/or average players aren’t available are either trying to conjure a market — or they’ve already explored the options and have decided a market isn’t there.
