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Contract, Roster Deadlines Loom For NBA Teams

December 21st 2020 at 8:07am CST by Luke Adams

We’re one day away from the start of the NBA’s 2020/21 regular season, making Monday the last day of the 2020 offseason. Today serves as the deadline for a number of contract- and roster-related decisions around the league. Here are the most important ones:

Rookie Scale Extensions

A total of 24 players entered the offseason eligible for rookie scale extensions. Five of those players – Jayson Tatum, Donovan Mitchell, Bam Adebayo, De’Aaron Fox, and Kyle Kuzma – have already signed new deals. That leaves the following 19 players eligible to sign rookie scale extensions on Monday:

Most of these players won’t sign new deals until the 2021 offseason, when they’re eligible for restricted free agency. But it would be a surprise if at least one or two more players from this list don’t finalize rookie scale extensions today, With Allen, Anunoby, Ball, John Collins, Fultz, and White among the most viable candidates.

The deadline for rookie scale extensions is at 5:00pm central time, ESPN’s Bobby Marks confirms (via Twitter).

Certain Veteran Contract Extensions

A veteran player who signed his current contract at least two years ago (or three years ago if it was a five-year deal) is eligible to sign an extension. That means that many veterans around the NBA are eligible to sign contract extensions today, but that number will significantly drop as of tomorrow.

Once the regular season begins, only veterans in the final year of their contracts can sign extensions — a player that has multiple years remaining is no longer extension-eligible until the following offseason.

[RELATED: Hoops Rumors Glossary: Veteran Contract Extension]

In other words, players like Stephen Curry or T.J. Warren, who are under contract through 2021/22, could sign an extension today that covers up to three additional seasons. However, starting on Tuesday, they’ll be ineligible to sign an extension until the 2021 offseason.

An extension candidate like Jrue Holiday, who has a player option for 2021/22, could still sign a new deal during the season, but he’d have to eliminate that option to do so. Picking it up would make him ineligible to complete an extension until the 2021 offseason after today.

The deadline for veteran extensions for players on non-expiring contracts is at 10:59pm CT tonight.

Regular Season Rosters

Most teams around the NBA finalized their roster cuts on Saturday for financial reasons, as we explained over the weekend. However, the deadline to reduce offseason rosters to the regular season limit of 15 players on standard contracts (plus two on two-way contracts) arrives tonight.

Typically, the regular season roster deadline would fall at 4:00pm CT. This year, as Marks tweets, it’s at 10:00pm CT. The NBA adjusted the waiver deadline for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in order to accommodate the preseason games that took place on Saturday night — teams that participated in those games were still able to cut players afterward and have those players clear waivers tonight.

While it’s certainly possible that there will be some additional roster shuffling today as teams tweak their back-end roster spots or fill two-way openings, only two teams – the Thunder and Kings – absolutely have to make cuts, as we detailed on Sunday.

The final day of the offseason is also the last day for teams to convert Exhibit 10 contracts into two-way deals. However, after Yuta Watanabe, Brodric Thomas, Reggie Perry, Marques Bolden, and Max Strus had their Exhibit 10 deals converted into two-ways over the weekend, I don’t think there are any candidates left for this maneuver.

Finally, Monday is the last day for a free agent to be signed-and-traded. There has been no indication that any potential sign-and-trades are in the works though.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

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