Arbitrage in the NBA--New Trend?

Greg Easterbrook over at ESPN.com made an interesting economic observation about a recent trade(?) just struck in the NBA. New trend?

The idea at work here is arbitrage: whereby a person makes an arrangement of similar deals between two imbalanced markets with the profit being the difference between the two market prices. In this instance, New Orleans basically sold (for cash) first round draft pick Darrell Arthur to the Portland Trail Blazers just a short time after selecting him. Hours later Portland sent (sold for cash) Arthur to the Rockets in Houston. Then, a mere few hours later, Houston traded Arthur to the Memphis Grizzlies.

According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Portland gave the Hornets about $3 million for Arthur. So the Trail Blazers' part of the transaction -- buying
Arthur's rights from the Hornets for $3 million, then almost immediately later
selling Arthur's rights to Houston -- would have made sense only if Huston paid
more than $3 million. That in turn means New Orleans failed to get top dollar,
because Houston was willing to pay more for Arthur than Portland was. Note:
Though it's normal for NBA teams to sell draft picks or rights to players, the
league always insists on announcing that the pick or player has been traded for
"cash considerations." In what way do "cash considerations" differ from "cash"?

The “Note” is particularly revealing. In European soccer, players are bought, sold and even loaned out in exchange for players and most often cash. Teams pay “transfer fees” to complete the transaction. The NBA isn’t quite so harsh on the words. The PR work on the part of the NBA is well-structured in this instance. I’ll be interested to see how this develops.