When a professional sports player is under contract and until the time that contract expires only the team holding their rights may engage in direct, indirect or implied interest in attracting that player to sign a future deal.

Every pro sport has this rule.

It prohibits teams, and their employees including scouts, trainers, other players, and owners from trying to poach players from other teams with promises of jobs or pay in the future.

These sorts of rules exist in all kinds of industries. The rules are spelled out in contracts and they work both ways.

Players under contract are also not allowed to contact prospective different employers until their contract has been terminated.

This should maintain an above board and equal playing field for suitors. It also protects the owners of the negotiating rights until their time of contract expires.

There are some exceptions.

In the NFL teams are allowed to interview assistant coaches of playoff bound teams during one week in January to consider them for open head coaching positions. That is probably to allow them a fair chance at a promotion to a better job, and even then they need their current employer’s permission.

Another usual exception is when players are about to be traded and their agents are given permission to speak to a potential trade partner to work out financials before the trade. It is not considered tampering if both sides have arranged it under league guidance. This has been made necessary with large contracts and no-trade clauses that spell out this action.

Yet at any time there is certainly an undercurrent of hypothetical speculation by agents and players.

The professional leagues of the NBA, NHL, MLB and NFL are fairly small close knit communities of scouts, players and coaches. Everyone has an agent, everyone has an alma mater, everyone has close friends they make along the way, and they all have e-mail and text messaging.

Friendship is not against the rules, and we all know that friends talk.

NFL quarterback Brett Favre was accused of passing along strategic game information from the playbook of his ex-team to an assistant coach friend on the Detroit Lions. While his alleged doings were not classed as tampering it has it ethical bounds if not leaning a little towards espionage of the Bill Belichick type.

It was rumoured for two seasons that Favre was trying to get out of Green Bay and into Minnesota – which he eventually did via the long route with a stopover in New York and two retirements.

Consider this.

Favre had coaching friends in Minnesota he wanted to reunite with. After retiring the first time he wanted to come back and play for them. That would imply at some point the wheels were in motion for that to happen.

Green Bay would not trade him to Minnesota since they are divisional rivals so they sent him to New York. New York released him after it appeared his shoulder would require surgery even though it was not as bad as they were led on.

Somehow Minnesota knew he could play and was not fooled by the “severity of injuries” before that 2009 season. They got their man and Favre got his team.

We can’t be too far off base to imagine that there had to be some chain of communication from the time Favre and his henchmen left Green Bay and wound up in Minnesota for all that to play out as it did?

Tampering is hard to prove in today’s sports.

Most leagues administer a tampering definition that goes something like this:

Tampering is when a player or team directly or indirectly entices, induces or persuades anybody (player, general manager, etc.) who is under contract with another team to negotiate for their services.

The NBA policy states that they take such allegations very seriously and they have imposed stiff policies when tampering has been discovered. However the league usually will not investigate a tampering allegation unless a victim team files a complaint.

They did investigate and fine the Miami Heat in 1995 for negotiating behind the scenes with Coach Pat Riley while he was still coaching the New York Knicks. That was relatively easy to prove since it was blatant and a very bold move to have direct discussions with a coach while he was still coaching another team.

So often tampering is hard to prove because of that word “indirectly”.

With all the complicated relationships across the business of a sport like basketball what exactly is being indirect?

Is it a few words at a charity golf tournament where some coach compliments an opposing player by saying that he wished his team had a player as dedicated as him?

Is it a team executive telling the spouse of another team’s general manager about the great beachside real estate deals he can get them in on if they ever move to their city?

Is it an owner or manager answering questions in a media interview about ways to improve his club?

What if he were to say they would like to draft a player with abilities like Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors? Does that mean he is implying that he would welcome a trade or opportunity to also sign Bosh?

After center Will Purdue left San Antonio in 1999 to sign with the Chicago Bulls, Purdue commented to the press about the possibility of the Bulls also signing his Spurs teammates Tony Parker or Grant Hill the next year. The league considered Purdue’s comments about his ex-teammates futures to be tampering and gave Purdue a warning.

For the most part in pro sports interviews with coaches, general managers, and most players get pretty bland when the topic of other teams’ players is broached.

In 2008 the NBA sent out a memo saying the best answer is not to mention names of players who are on other teams.

That’s what the NBA would like and they sometimes get that but not from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

The NBA announced a $100,000 fine on the Dallas owner for comments made publically about another team’s impending free agent.

During an interview with CNNMoney.com Cuban was asked about the upcoming free agency period that begins on July 1st, and specifically about Cleveland star and soon to be free agent LeBron James who is the most high profile free agent in sports ever.

He was asked if he would like James to play on his team in Dallas and Cuban did not deny interest but added “the NBA star needs to play in a place where he trusts the organization.”

Cuban was asked if he felt that James would stay in Cleveland or sign elsewhere like in New York and Cuban answered: “I don’t know....what I do know about LeBron in the minimal time I’ve spent talking with him (maybe at the All-Star game held in Dallas three months ago) is he just wants to win. Money’s not his issue.....Come July 1st, yeah, of course anybody would be interested in LeBron James, and if he leaves via free agency, then it’s going to be tough (to sign him). If he does like I’m guessing, hoping he will....he will try and force a sign-and-trade, and that gives us a chance.”

By the letter of the rules what Cuban has done is break the NBA’s tampering rule.

But in the current climate with all the public knowledge of the LeBron situation though has he really?

The James speculation has been out there in the public domain and commented on wildly, by everyone, and except for the fact Cuban has a billion dollars in his pockets and actually owns a team that can bid on James in July, he hasn’t said anything we are not already thinking.