Team A wants to move an older player who is no longer ML quality but still has a large contract. They're willing to attach a prospect in a deal to get this contract off their books. Nothing new there - happens all the time. They've even found a taker (Team B), a .500 team with lots of excess payroll available who could use the prospect. They agree to trade their bad contract and a fairly good prospect for a decent prospect.

Unfortunately, in this case the older, bad contract player also has a no trade clause and refuses to go from a winning team to a .500 team. Would it be ethical to work around the no-trade clause by putting this player on waivers and having Team B claim him (nobody else would) while swapping the aforementioned prospects?

Not sure I'd be comfortable with it regardless, but it's a work-around I've thought of in the past and wondered about the greater HBD community's opinion of whether that's ethical.

If the world is on board, it's probably OK. Personally, I'm not sure I'd approve. The NTC is there for a reason. May have made a difference in who signed the guy.

If the trade A is passable through the veto process.. How can you tell a guy he cant claim a guy off of waivers.

if you find yourself asking if something smells bad it does.

Do we even know that designating a player wipes out the no-trade? I'm quite confident that waiving him without designating him won't make the no-trade go away. And if you can't trade the guy while he's designated and waiting for assignment, then the only way the logistics work is for Team B to claim the player, have the claim succeed, and then after the fact Team A sends cash and prospects to team B for nothing at all, which is collusive in my opinion (ie, agree with pjf).

Basically agree with pjf and Mike that if you're above board with this and the world is OK with it, whatever, but that I wouldn't be OK with it.

• If the waiver is done first, then Team B could end up the sucker with an expensive guy and Team A would be under no obligation to do the trade.
• If the trade is done first, then Team B can accept the trade and leave the waiver guy out there, making Team A the sucker.
• If the league doesn't think the trade is even handed on its own merits, they can veto.
• This all assumes dedelman's point that you can't waive a player to a weaker team, which I have never done.

If everyone agrees not to complain should any of those scenarios arise, then so be it.