While some NBA teams will head into free agency with more than enough cap room to add a maximum salary player, other clubs will be totally capped out. However, each of the NBA’s 30 clubs will be on common ground in one respect: No team will be ineligible to sign a player to a minimum salary contract.
Teams with cap room available will have a little more flexibility to sign players to longer-term minimum salary contracts, but over-the-cap clubs will still be able to use the minimum salary exception to add as many players as they want. Unlike other exceptions, such as the mid-level or the bi-annual, the minimum salary exception can be used multiple times, for contracts of up to two years.
[RELATED: Values of 2018/19 mid-level, bi-annual exceptions]
Undrafted free agents and late second-round picks are often recipients of minimum salary contracts, but there are plenty of veterans who end up settling for the minimum too. Of course, because a player’s minimum salary is determined by how much NBA experience he has, many veterans will earn more than twice as much money as a rookie will in 2018/19 on a minimum salary contract.
Listed below are 2018/19’s minimum salary figures, sorted by years of NBA experience. If a player spent any time on an NBA club’s active regular season roster in a given season, he earned one year of experience. So any player with zero years of experience has not yet made his NBA debut.
Here’s the full breakdown:
| Years of Experience | Salary |
|---|---|
| 0 | $838,464 |
| 1 | $1,349,383 |
| 2 | $1,512,601 |
| 3 | $1,567,007 |
| 4 | $1,621,415 |
| 5 | $1,757,429 |
| 6 | $1,893,447 |
| 7 | $2,029,463 |
| 8 | $2,165,481 |
| 9 | $2,176,260 |
| 10+ | $2,393,887 |
Because the NBA doesn’t want teams to avoid signing veteran players in favor of cheaper, younger players, the league reimburses clubs who sign veterans with three or more years of experience to one-year, minimum salary contracts. Those deals will only count against the cap – and against a team’s bank balance – for $1,512,601, the minimum salary for a player with two years of experience.
For instance, if David West – who has 15 years of NBA experience – signs a one-year, minimum salary contract with a new team, that team would only be charged $1,512,601 for West’s contract. He’d earn $2,393,887, but the NBA would make up the difference. This only applies to one-year contracts, rather than multiyear deals.
If a player signs a minimum salary contract after the regular season begins, he’ll earn a pro-rated portion of the amount listed above.
Players who are still on minimum-salary contracts that they signed in a previous season will have slightly higher minimum salaries than a player who signs a new contract this offseason. Those minimum salary figures are as follows:
| Years of Experience | Salary |
|---|---|
| 1 | $1,378,242 |
| 2 | $1,544,951 |
| 3 | $1,600,520 |
| 4 | $1,656,092 |
| 5 | $1,795,015 |
| 6 | $1,933,941 |
| 7 | $2,072,867 |
| 8 | $2,211,794 |
| 9 | $2,222,803 |
| 10+ | $2,445,085 |
These numbers would apply to a player like Heat shooting guard Rodney McGruder, who signed a three-year, minimum-salary contract in 2016. He now has two years of NBA experience, so his minimum salary for 2018/19 will be $1,544,951. If he had been waived and signed a new minimum deal for ’18/19, his salary would only be $1,512,601.
Can min contracts be signed to fill up a 12 man roster or up to a 15 man roster? For example, if the Lakers sign Kawhi and are over the cap at 8 players. Can they only sign four more to get to 12 or can they go beyond that with min salaries?
No limit on minimum salary contracts beyond the 15-man roster limit (or 20 in the offseason). The Lakers could use all their cap room on four players and sign 11 to minimum deals.