He would break the bank -- 2 years left on his contract so he would cost some money and he's due $16mm a year in salary.It's worded kind of oddly. "one Eastern Conference club has already declined an approach from Bale's people."
So that doesn't read like a team was interested in Bale and ultimately decided he was too expensive (which, him being too expensive could still very well be the deciding factor). This reads more like there was a particular team that Bale was interested in going to (whether or not interest was reciprocated at all), so they reached out to the team to see if they wanted to move forward with a transfer.