Protected Draft Pick Question

DRAFT PICK PROTECTION


• Teams can apply draft pick protection to any of their own 1st round draft picks. You cannot apply or modify a protection on another teams draft pick, or on any 2nd round picks.
• If a protected pick is traded, the protection is traded with it. No deleting or modifying that protection.
• Only the mother team can protect their picks. For example, if the Spurs trade their own 1st, they can protect it. If they trade the pick unprotected, the receiving team cannot then trade this pick and add protection.
• You can only apply one year of protection. No scaled down protection in years to follow.
• If protection is enforced, a team will receive the next available 1st round pick unprotected. This means that when receiving a pick with protection, the receiving team may not receive the unprotected pick for some years.

Question (The bolded is what this pertains to):
Can the "mother team" that has traded a pick with protection modify/ remove the protection of said pick?

Ex: Mother team initially trades Top 10 or so protected pick, enters negotiations with team that owns said pick to remove protection from pick meaning "mother team" removes Top 10 or so protection from said pick therefore forfeiting it over to the team that now owns the pick regardless if it is #1-#30 (in this example the team protected pick was originally traded to still owns the protected pick).

It happens in the NBA and was curious if this is possible here as there is no rule stating the mother team cannot modify a traded protected pick.

Of course protection cannot be added to a traded pick once traded, this is strictly about the mother team removing the protection from the traded pick.

Appreciate it.

This situation isn't likely to come up much, but I'd just as soon not introduce the element into play, personally. Then it becomes the mother team trying to extort something for protection removal, and can lead to a double dipping bonus of the pick's trade value - essentially causing the mother team to trade it twice.

Not to mention, unless it's an absolute guarantee that the pick would fall under protection and the draft class is worth it, it's a poor idea for any holding team to consider such a trade. Essentially this is just creating another tool for the savvy GMs to bend over the less bright GMs, which isn't good for the long-term stability of the league.

No, once it's been traded protection cannot be changed. If the mother team receives the protected pick back via a trade, then it wipes out the protection and a new protection can be placed on it if it gets traded again.