By John Hollinger / The Athletic
Wait, you can undo a trade in the NBA?
Yes, actually, you can. Just like that. It rarely happens, for obvious reasons. Executives are not going to spend a lot of time negotiating a deal and then just go, “Psyche,” three days later.
But every so often, it happens. The Los Angeles Lakers’ unwinding of their swap for Mark Williams at the trade deadline is the latest example of a team exiting a trade because of a failed physical.
Last Wednesday night, the Lakers had agreed to send Dalton Knecht, Cam Reddish, a 2030 pick swap and a 2031 first-round pick to the Charlotte Hornets for Williams before Thursday’s trade deadline. By Saturday, when Williams was not yet active for the Lakers’ game against Indiana, it was obvious something might be up. Later that night, the Lakers canceled the trade.
Here’s the deal: In the NBA, a trade is not completed until the two teams sign off that the players have reported and completed and passed their physicals. Teams often agree to waive this requirement for salary dump trades, where the players are secondary to the accounting, but never for a basketball-driven move like this one.
The NBA’s collective bargaining agreement gives players 48 hours to report and submit to a physical. The team has another 24 hours to approve the physical. That time can also be extended by agreement of all sides in the trade. But time is usually of the essence, as none of the players in the deal can participate in a game until all of them pass.
So what do we mean by “pass,” exactly? Well, we’re getting into murky territory. This is an important, underrated point: Technically, a team can fail a player’s physical for any reason at all. A hangnail. A droopy eyelid. Halitosis. Anything.
Thus, in past instances where this has happened, many around the NBA have wondered if a loss of courage or commitment was the actual medical issue, rather than a newly discovered physical problem with the player. If we’re being very technical, in fact, flunking the physical is an act of omission and not an act of commission — the team is simply failing to approve the final step on the trade, thus preventing its completion.
Actually, this was not the first instance of a physical resulting in a trade alteration at the 2025 deadline. The difference, however, is that the other instance still ended with a trade going through: Philadelphia agreed to send Dallas a future second-round pick in addition to their previously negotiated trade, when the Mavericks thought Caleb Martin’s hip injury was worse than they originally believed.
The Lakers and the Hornets did not have that option, however, because after the trade deadline, no modifications are allowed. In contrast, Dallas and Philadelphia had agreed to their deal on Tuesday and completed Martin’s physical early enough that they could renegotiate terms just before the deadline buzzer.
That policy is one of the hidden risks of last-minute shopping: The Lakers’ only options were to complete the trade as agreed or blow it up. Whether they unwound the trade because they did not like the imaging on Williams’ knee or because they just did not like the defensive clips that people were posting on social media is almost irrelevant. The endgame is the same: an incredible sliding doors moment.
What would the Lakers have done the rest of this season with Williams? What would their future be like? While this type of speculation is possible with any player-team combination, this one feels more real because they had an agreed-upon trade. We will always have that parallel comparison point over the next few years.
And because of that, it evokes memories of two other great sliding doors moments in NBA history that involve flunked physicals: Tyson Chandler and Sean Elliott.
At the 2009 deadline, the Oklahoma City Thunder had a deal ready to go that would send Chris Wilcox, Joe Smith and the draft rights to DeVon Hardin to New Orleans for Chandler. But the Thunder rescinded the deal over concerns with Chandler’s toe.
Whatever the issue was with the toe, he went on to play 11 more seasons, and started at center for the Dallas team that beat the Thunder in the 2011 Western Conference finals on the way to the championship. And those Oklahoma City teams never found the answer at center — trading for Kendrick Perkins and supplementing him with other fringe rotation players until drafting Steven Adams in 2014. Can you imagine if they’d had Chandler running with Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka?
Going further in the way-back machine, in February 1994, the Houston Rockets and the Detroit Pistons had a deal ready to go that would send Elliott to the Rockets for forwards Robert Horry and Matt Bullard and two second-rounders.
Elliott flunked his physical in Houston because of a kidney condition that eventually required a transplant, although he played seven more seasons, made the 1996 All-Star team and started for the Spurs’ championship team in 1999.
Horry started on the Rockets’ champions in 1994 and 1995 and also ended up winning two rings in San Antonio. This one is fascinating to ponder because it affects so many champions of that era, including the three Lakers championship teams Horry played for from 2000 to 2002. Do any of his seven championships happen if he goes to the Pistons in 1994? Does Horry’s presence swing the 2005 finals that the Spurs won over Detroit in seven?
Will the Williams nondeal fall into that category, or will it be more along the lines of the Donatas Motiejunas trade between Houston and Detroit that was rescinded in 2015? (Yeah, not a lot of long-term reverberations from that one.) Only time will tell.
For now, Williams goes back to Charlotte, and Knecht and Reddish go back to Los Angeles, each knowing his team tried to trade him. Awkward. The Lakers also get their picks back and, perhaps, a chance to do something a bit more emphatic with them in the offseason.
Theoretically, they could even trade for Williams again this summer on different terms, although I’m not sure the Hornets will be returning their calls. (One of the ancillary costs of nuking a trade is that other teams become less willing to do business with you, especially the one you just burned.)
In the short term, Los Angeles is left high and dry in the middle, which is why it dealt for Williams in the first place. (And why the Lakers probably thought long and hard before rescinding the trade.) They have to go through the rest of the current season with a replacement-level combo of Jaxson Hayes and Christian Wood at center, which seems suboptimal. The Lakers might find a big man in the buyout market, but the trade also put them back to 15 players, so they will need to waive somebody. Also, this year’s buyout market seems pretty dry at the center spot.
Charlotte now faces the prospect of extending Williams this summer or once again turning to the trade market. Any deal with him is complicated by the fact that the Lakers flunked his physical, which, combined with Williams’ injury history, will make other partners skittish.
All because of an odd, little-used provision of the NBA trade rules that allows teams to zap a trade, just like that.
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