We are now inside a week before the NBA calendar flips to Dec. 15. And we know you already know what that means: That’s the date when most players who signed new contracts this past summer become eligible to be traded.

Largely for that reason, Dec. 15 has come to be known as the unofficial start to NBA Trade Season.

Yet that might actually be underselling it thanks to the league’s latest collective bargaining agreement that went into effect in the summer of 2023.

In the current environment, Dec. 15 is increasingly regarded around the league as almost a new deadline unto itself. That was illustrated last season when the Golden State Warriors acquired Dennis Schröder on the first very day that a deal was allowed, taking advantage of a fresh wrinkle in the revised labor pact which states that acquiring a player via trade by Dec. 16 makes them eligible to be aggregated again with other contracts in a subsequent move before the NBA’s annual in-season trade deadline every February … even though less than 60 days will have elapsed between Dec. 16 and this season’s Feb. 5 deadline.

League sources have consistently mentioned that such optionality was a key element of the Warriors’ calculus to pursue Schröder from the Brooklyn Nets when they did in the first place. And the Warriors duly traded Schröder again at the February buzzer, using his salary as part of the multi-team trade construction that enabled Golden State to acquire Jimmy Butler from Miami. (Schröder, for the record, was routed to Utah in the multi-team Butler deal before securing a buyout that enabled him to join the Detroit Pistons.)

So …

Can we expect a trade or two next Monday when Dec. 15 arrives?

Various team executives we’ve consulted certainly describe it as a very feasible outcome.

Let’s assess, then, who could actually be moved next week.

As much as the Warriors might like to find a Jonathan Kuminga deal, that will not happen next week. Kuminga, remember, is among those players who can’t be dealt until Jan. 15.

One prominent name, however, will indeed be in immediate play.