The DeAndre Jordan fiasco exposed a loophole that's going to completely change NBA free agency

The DeAndre Jordan saga — where one of the NBA's most coveted free agents backed out of a verbal agreement with the Dallas Mavericks at the 11th hour and re-signed with the Los Angeles Clippers — is one of the great NBA offseason stories of all time.
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Until this point, NBA free agency had functioned through a set of unwritten rules. On July 1 teams can start negotiation with free agents. For the next eight days there's a moratorium on signing players, during which the NBA counts its money and determines the next year's salary cap. On July 9, players can officially sign the deals they negotiated during the moratorium.

The loophole here is obvious: The deals negotiated during the moratorium aren't actually binding, even though NBA teams treat them as such. When a player verbally agrees to a contract before July 9 — as Jordan did with the Mavericks five days before the moratorium ended — the rest of the league leaves him alone. There's an unwritten "no poaching" rule, and this gives teams enough assurance to do an extraordinary degree of business before they can actually sign these guys on July 9.

The Mavericks, for example, went about their business under the assumption that they had Jordan locked up. They let Tyson Chandler go to Phoenix. They didn't put in an offer for centers like Omer Asik, Robin Lopez, or Kosta Koufos, all of whom are now off the board. They didn't pull the trigger on a trade for Roy Hibbert, who's now headed to the Lakers. They signed Wes Matthews thinking he'd be a secondary piece on a Jordan-centered team, rather than a primary piece. The Mavs are now screwed, and they're screwed because they followed the standard practice of behaving as if deals agreed upon during the moratorium are set in stone.
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http://www.businessinsider.com/deandre-jordan-fiasco-exposes-nba-free-agency-loophole-2015-7