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How do you prevent the player from just making the "trade demand" through backchannels?
That's the problem. There already is a penalty for players demanding trades publicly, and the players avoid that by having their agents convey it privately. Just a slight variation from that to having it conveyed via backchannels/other players, etc.. All they have to do is ensure the team knows they want to be traded without directly saying so, and punishment becomes very difficult.
What you'd have to do if make it so that max players couldn't be traded period, or that these is a penalty kicker or something to reduce the incentive to demand trades even if the player can't be shown to have demanded it. And it would have to be unwaiverable by the team. So obviously, that could hurt teams as well.
Or maybe the league just has to show more balls when it comes to what constitutes a "trade demand", so that they could basically peak behind the curtain and consider something a trade demand even if made indirectly or inferentially.