The actual (attempted) trade that prompted me to post this involved a player with an explicit NTC (in his contract) on one side, and a player with an implicit NTC (he was a 10/5 guy) on the other side. I didn't get to that level of detail in the original post because it wasn't relevant to the question. It's only relevant now after a couple of people responded "DON'T OFFER NTCs IN CONTRACTS!! PROBLEM SOLVED!!!" It really is not that simple.

And I'm not crying that the current process is "unfair". I'm just questioning if the "impossible trade" scenario makes sense, since in real life all NTC invocations are not a matter of "I'll only go to a better team". I was just looking to start discussion on alternatives.

The only alternative offered so far was to have the player ask for an immediate bonus if you want to trade him. That's a good start. Let's expand on that.

• If the player is being traded to a team with a better record, he'll accept the deal
• If the player is being traded to a team with a worse record, the player may demand money. Let it range anywhere from $1m to $10m. The bigger the difference in team records, the more money has to be throw in. Or maybe the demand will be somehow based on the player's patience rating. The lower the patience, the more money he'll demand. A very low patience might always still be an automatic refusal of a trade. Or maybe it's a combination of both team records and patience ratings that determines demand (or refusal).
• So who should be responsible for throwing in the money? Should it be the sending team, the receiving team, or can in be a combination of both as long as the combined total meets the player's demand?

Ahh, I always love the MikeT23 vs (insert random team owner name here) back and forths. It's like a breath of fresh air. ;)