Thursday, October 31 is the deadline for teams to exercise rookie scale options for the 2020/21 season. These options apply to either the third or fourth year of a rookie scale contract for players who were drafted in the first round. If they’re not exercised, the player becomes an unrestricted free agent the following summer.
These decisions must be made a year in advance, so even though Lonzo Ball has just started his third season, the Pelicans are already required to exercise his fourth-year option for $11MM+.
Most clubs facing these options decisions have already made them. As our tracker shows, of the 58 rookie scale options for 2020/21, 48 have been exercised so far. That leaves just 10 outstanding rookie scale options to be picked up or turned down by the end of the day on Thursday.
Here are the 2020/21 rookie scale options that have yet to be exercised:
- Marvin Bagley III, Kings (third year, $8,963,640)
- Josh Jackson, Grizzlies (fourth year, $8,930,242)
- Note: Memphis won’t exercise Jackson’s option.
- De’Aaron Fox, Kings (fourth year, $8,099,627)
- Harry Giles, Kings (fourth year, $3,976,510)
- Ante Zizic, Cavaliers (fourth year, $3,872,215)
- Caleb Swanigan, Kings (fourth year, $3,665,787)
- Josh Okogie, Timberwolves (third year, $2,651,040)
- Robert Williams, Celtics (third year, $2,029,920)
- Jacob Evans, Warriors (third year, $2,017,320)
- Omari Spellman, Warriors (third year, $1,988,280)
Teams only have to take action if they intend to pick up these options. Otherwise, they can simply let the deadline pass without exercising them. That’s reportedly what the Grizzlies intend to do with Jackson; we’ll see if any other teams follow suit.
Players like Bagley, Fox, and Okogie are locks to have their options picked up, but that’s not necessarily the case for everyone on this list. Zizic and Swanigan are among the candidates to potentially join Jackson as unrestricted free agents in 2020.
Warriors need to let Evans go. He has done nothing that any waived player can do. The guy has been a big disappointment.
Pretty tough to make an impression when you only get 6 minutes a game in your first season, plus a stack of other players taking shots ahead of you.
Timelord and Spellman both seem like good bets.
I’d be a little surprised if any besides Jackson, Swanigan, and Zizic don’t get picked up.
Does it go to midnight ET? I’m a little surprised the Warriors haven’t picked up either Evans or Spellman. It’s hard to beat those rookie contracts.
I actually don’t recall if the deadline is 5:00pm or 11:59pm ET on Oct 31, but either way I imagine most of the remaining decisions will be reported during the daytime tomorrow.