Uninformal Method for Influencing Property Rights Assignments: The Case of NBA Player Trader Demands

The National Basketball Association (NBA) has witnessed significant transformations over its history, yet one fundamental shift remains absent: the transition to players possessing their own property rights. As a league who markets their players individualistically, this may come as a surprise to many that teams actually possess the rights to these players. This study scrutinizes public player demands for trades as unique instances of efforts to informally regain control over property rights. This study also aims to isolates NBA trade demands by combing through historical NBA trades and then matching these trades to public trade demands reported by the media. Additionally, extra data is collected by using Spotrac for player salary, contract length, and year on contract. Publicly available resources are used to incorporate other variables including player age, whether the player held out on the team, date of the trade demand, and if the player was a star player or not. By collecting all of these variables, this research aims to identify trends in players who demand trades. We also seek to explore which factors are associated with the success (or failure) of player trade demands. This study is also applicable to the well-known Coase Theorem by investigating player-team dynamics related to property rights assignments.