Just wonder if NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL players are legally/contractually required to play for a team they are traded to (maybe this question was asked before but I cannot recall the SDMB answer.) Apparently, there is no legal requirement that a player play for a team who drafted him, so I wonder why trades would be any different - if the Spurs send Kawhi Leonard to the Sixers for a lot of draft picks, but Kawhi says “I don’t agree to this and I won’t play for Philly,” then is the trade voided, or do the Spurs get a lot of free draft picks and Philly gets essentially scammed when Leonard doesn’t show up at Philly airport?
If Leonard plays in the NBA, he plays for Philadelphia. He can retire and not play at all, but then he runs the risk of no team ever wanting him to play for them. Technically, Philly gets hosed, but Kawhi is committing career suicide at the same time.
Unless the player has met the requirements in the CBA for free agency he must play for whatever team holds his rights. If he refuses he has two options: first, he can play somewhere else, not uncommon in hockey or basketball. The team retains rights to the players should he come back to play in North America, but if he never does those rights are meaningless. The second option is retirement, but again, the team retains the rights to him if he ever comes out of retirement.
There is no way to void those rights. As an example, if Calvin Johnson decides tomorrow that he wants to play again he must either play for the Lions or negotiate a trade or release. Only an unconditional release will free him to sign with any team.
If a player plays out his contract he is free to go anywhere he wants. However, even that frequently comes with conditions, like the NFL’s Franchise Player tag. The team tags the player and the player must play for the team, but at a much higher salary. Also, if they are restricted free agents any signing can be matched or compensatory picks given to the team losing the player.
All of this is spelled out in the CBA negotiated in each league. Baseball was the real start of free agency. If you’re really interested in this, look up baseball’s antitrust exemption, the reserve clause, Curt Flood, Flood v. Kuhn, the Seitz decision, and baseball collusion. Virtually all sports labor rules come from baseball labor relations. The other leagues have their own issues, notably with salary caps, percentage of revenues, and non-guaranteed contracts, but it’s all substantially the same.
American sports trade contracts, not just people. In Euro soccer, a transfer is of the person and a new contract is negotiated.
Where did you get this impression? You can’t force a draftee to sign with your team, but holding his or her rights means they can’t play for anyone else in the league.
Nitpick: they can refuse to sign but they go back in the draft.
You can’t force somebody to play for a sports team. We have the 13th Amendment.
But professional sports teams have an agreement that they will not sign a player if another team holds the right to him. So the athlete has the choice of playing for the team that drafted him, trying to get them to agree to release him, or not playing in the sport.
They also have the choice of playing internationally.
Or, if they are credibly multi-talented, they can threaten to play a different sport entirely until they force a trade, like John Elway did:
*In the 1983 NFL Draft, Elway was selected as the first overall pick by the Baltimore Colts. Elway was wary of playing for the Colts, among the worst teams in the league at the time, and his father advised him against playing for head coach Frank Kush, who had a reputation as a harsh taskmaster. While Elway preferred football, his agent Marvin Demoff later stated that baseball was “a true option” for him at the time. The possibility gave Elway leverage in negotiations with the Colts.[19]
After unsuccessfully attempting to negotiate a private agreement with the Colts in which Elway would cite his alleged desire to remain on the West coast to explain the team trading him, Elway publicly threatened to join the Yankees full-time if the Colts did not trade him; Demoff wrote in his journal, published three decades later, that “he would be a garbage collector before he’d play for Baltimore.” Elway’s refusal to join the Colts was controversial— Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw denounced him, stating “you should play baseball … he’s not the kind of guy you win championships with”—but many other NFL teams began negotiations with the Colts for the quarterback. One possibility was trading Elway for the San Francisco 49ers’ Joe Montana, whose team had had a poor season in 1982. Another was a trade with the San Diego Chargers, which was negotiating a new contract with its star quarterback Dan Fouts. The New England Patriots were interested, but the Colts did not wish to trade Elway to a team in the same division.[19]
The Colts’ general manager Ernie Accorsi wanted Elway as, Accorsi later said, he did not foresee the 1984 Draft as producing any first-round quarterbacks. Accorsi announced Elway as the team’s choice as soon as possible during the 15-minute window on draft day, surprising observers. Elway that day reiterated his wish to not play for the Colts at a press conference, saying “As I stand here right now, I’m playing baseball”. (When a reporter pointed out that the Yankees were not based on the West coast, Elway replied “They play baseball during the summertime”.) The Colts, however, were interested in offensive lineman Chris Hinton, who the Denver Broncos had chosen as the fourth pick in the first round. On May 2, Colts owner Robert Irsay and Accorsi agreed to trade Elway for Hinton, backup quarterback Mark Herrmann, and a first-round pick in the 1984 Draft.[19] The Colts controversial relocation to Indianapolis the following year would later prove to somewhat vindicate Jack Elway’s concerns, and that franchise would largely struggle until the arrival of Peyton Manning during Elway’s last season as a player.*
NFL fans with long memories are familiar with Kelly Stouffer, a quarterback who was a first-round draft pick by the (then) St. Louis Cardinals in 1987. Stouffer didn’t much want to play for the Cardinals, so his agent demanded a humongous contract. The Cardinals wouldn’t raise their offer that high and Stouffer sat out training camp, pre-season, the regular season and the post-season.
The Cardinals had exclusive rights to Stouffer right up to the next year’s NFL draft. Finally, five
days before the 1988 draft, they traded negotiation rights to seattle for, IIRC, a low draft pick.
The first player to come to mind is Eli Manning. The Chargers had the first overall draft pick since they had the worst record the previous season, and it was assumed that they planned to pick Eli. But Eli had no desire to lead the worst team in football and publicly announced that he’d never play for them if drafted. Fortunately for all involved it never became an issue, because the Chargers worked out a deal with the Giants that after picking Eli, they’d trade him to the Giants for QB Philip Rivers (who the Giants were picking later that round) and some other picks later in the draft. Rivers and Manning are still leading the Chargers and Giants.
Manning probably made a good decision. He has two Super Bowl rings, and the Chargers have still never even been to a Super Bowl.
The Chargers have been to a Super Bowl but not since the incident that you described.
A NHL player can play in Europe in some cases but not all. During the recent lockouts a bunch of NHL players joined Euro teams. Also Euro leagues pay less than the NHL. They cannot leave their Euro team during the season to join the NHL.
John Elway is another famous example. He was originally drafted by the Baltimore Colts but he didn’t want to play for them. And Elway had an advantage; he was also a very good baseball player and he had opportunities to play professional baseball if he didn’t play professional football. So the Baltimore traded Elway to Denver, where he was willing to play.
There are times where if a player refuses to report (Curt Flood to Philadelphia in 1970, Donn Clendenon to Houston in 1969) where the teams and if need be the commissioner will restructure the deal for other players or draft choices. I think in the Curt Flood deal, the Phillies ended up far better than if Flood had reported. They got a talented minor leaguer named Willie Montanez and a few years later traded him for Garry Maddox.
Since players unions are empowered to bargain away individual rights, if a player doesn’t like a trade or team that drafted him, he has to take some extreme measures.
Some contracts for athletes in the North American pro leagues contain language regarding trades – the player may be allowed to specify certain teams to which he will (or won’t) accept a trade, or may even be given the right to refuse any trade. Generally, those sorts of clauses are fairly uncommon, and only given to the biggest stars.
A little bit more on “no-trade clauses,” from Wikipedia:
Assuming that that article is accurate, Leonard hasn’t played for long enough to have qualified for negotiating a no-trade clause into his contract (he’s one year short in total NBA experience).
The examples of Flood and Clendenon are good ones. But I don’t understand your comment about player unions at all. At the time of the Flood trade Flood was absolutely the property of the Cardinals: they owned his contract in perpetuity and could trade him, keep him, send him to the minors, pretty much whatever they wanted. His only real recourse was to quit playing baseball…which is essentially what he did after being part of a trade he didn’t like.
Then along came the union, and one of the things it did in the early seventies was to establish the ten and five rule saying that players with ten years in the majors and the last five with their current team could veto a trade. That rule, had it been in place three years earlier, would have allowed Flood individual rights—specifically it would have allowed him to say he didn’t want to play in Philadelphia and so there would’ve been no trade. A little later along came free agency, which opened up even more “individual rights “ to players. It has always been the owners much more than the unions who have tried to restrict the right of players to play where they want.
That’s true, the ‘94 season where the 49ers smashed them. I forgot about that appearance. But yes, that was their only time.
They did win the AFL championship in the 1963 season, before there was such a thing as the Super Bowl. So it’s been 55 years since they were champions.
Players unions do very little for minor league players or amateurs who are subject to the agreements the union and owners negotiate. Granted owners do even less. But baseball unions could negotiate better pay for minor league players but that means taking money out of major league players.