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Players demanding trades has ‘gotten a little out of control’ — Skip Bayless | NBA | UNDISPUTED

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Skip Bayless says the NBA’s trade-demand culture has crossed a line, and he’s got a radical fix in mind.

A day after NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called superstar trade demands “disheartening” following the league’s Board of Governors meeting in Las Vegas, Skip Bayless and Shannon Sharpe took up the debate on FOX Sports’ Skip and Shannon: UNDISPUTED. The July 10, 2019 segment landed right in the middle of an offseason defined by Anthony Davis forcing his way from New Orleans to the Lakers and Paul George abruptly requesting out of Oklahoma City to join Kawhi Leonard in Los Angeles. Bayless sided with Silver, while Sharpe pushed back hard on the double standard he sees at the center of the whole argument.

• Adam Silver told reporters at the July 9 Board of Governors meeting in Las Vegas that trade demands from under-contract stars had become “disheartening” and that the league needs to reexamine player movement rules.
• The comments followed Anthony Davis forcing a trade from the Pelicans to the Lakers and Paul George requesting a trade from the Thunder to the Clippers to team up with Kawhi Leonard.
• Skip Bayless proposed eliminating or sharply limiting mid-contract trades, arguing players should honor their full deals or wait for unrestricted free agency to change teams.

Silver’s Vegas Remarks Set the Tone

Silver’s comments weren’t a passing aside — they came directly out of a Board of Governors meeting where the league office and owners have grown increasingly uneasy watching star players dictate their own destinations while still under multi-year, guaranteed contracts. Davis had two years left on his deal when he pushed the Pelicans to trade him to the Lakers. George had just signed a max extension in Oklahoma City the previous summer before asking out to join Leonard on the Clippers. Silver’s framing — that the mechanisms governing player movement need a fresh look — gave Bayless and Sharpe plenty to chew on the next morning.

Bayless: ‘A Little Out of Control’

Bayless agreed with Silver’s underlying concern, arguing that the pattern of stars leveraging trade demands while under long-term contracts had “gotten a little out of control.” His proposed remedy was blunt: strip mid-contract trades out of the equation almost entirely, forcing players to either play out the deals they sign or wait until they hit unrestricted free agency to pick their next team. It’s the kind of proposal that would never survive collective bargaining, but Bayless framed it as the logical end point of Silver’s own complaint — if the commissioner thinks the system is broken, someone has to name the fix.

Trade demands have “gotten a little out of control.” — Skip Bayless

Sharpe Criticizes Changing Team Loyalty

Sharpe wasn’t buying the one-sided framing. He pointed out that franchises trade, bench, and waive contracted players without warning all the time, with none of the backlash superstars absorb for doing the same thing in reverse. If a front office can ship a player out mid-deal for pure asset management, Sharpe argued, a player under that same contract should have the same right to push for a situation he actually wants to be in. The exchange mirrored a broader debate that’s followed the league all summer, one that touches the same themes of leverage and public scrutiny that show up whenever public figures push back on the narratives built around them.

The Bigger Picture on Player Empowerment

The Davis and George situations weren’t isolated incidents — they were the headline examples Silver had in mind when he raised the issue in Vegas. Both moves reshaped two conference contenders in a matter of weeks and left rival executives grumbling that a signed contract no longer guarantees a team gets to keep its own decision-making power. That’s the tension UNDISPUTED aired out: Bayless siding with the league’s discomfort, Sharpe defending the players’ right to use every bit of leverage they’ve got, in an industry where career trajectories can shift as fast as any other high-profile turn covered across trending entertainment stories.

Silver didn’t announce any concrete rule change in Vegas — just a promise to “look at” the system, which leaves Bayless’s no-mid-contract-trades idea as a talk-show thought experiment rather than anything close to policy. But with training camps still weeks away and the Lakers and Clippers both walking in as instant title threats built on exactly the kind of moves Silver was complaining about, this argument isn’t going anywhere once the season tips off.