After a couple quiet months around the NBA, October is full of important deadlines for roster and contract decisions. Here’s our round-up of the dates to keep an eye on this month:
Regular season roster decisions
The 2024/25 regular season tips off on Tuesday, October 22, which means teams must set their rosters for the season by 4:00 pm Central time on Monday, October 21. To be in accordance with regular season roster limits, a team must be carrying no more than 15 players on standard contracts and three on two-way deals.
While teams have until Oct. 23 to set their their regular season rosters, many clubs will make their final cuts on or before Saturday, October 19. That’s the final day that a team can waive a player on a non-guaranteed contract and avoid paying any of his salary.
[RELATED: 2024/25 Non-Guaranteed Contracts By Team]
Because a player gets paid for the time he spends on waivers, a player who is cut on Monday, Oct. 21 wouldn’t clear waivers until Wednesday, Oct. 23, the second day of the regular season. That means that even if his contract is non-guaranteed, he’d earn two days’ worth of his salary.
Teams who intend to waive players with partially or fully guaranteed salaries are in better position to wait until the Monday before the regular season begins. For instance, if the Pacers decide to cut James Johnson, who has a $750K partial guarantee, it wouldn’t matter if they do so on October 19 or 21 — he’d receive his $750K either way.
However, if the Pacers want to waive Cole Swider, whose salary is entirely non-guaranteed, they’d likely do so on the Saturday. Waiting until the Monday would mean paying him $23,994 (2/174ths of his $2,087,519 salary).
Two-way contract conversions
A player on an Exhibit 10 contract can have his deal converted into a two-way contract, but only up until Monday, October 21, the day before the regular season begins.
If a player on an Exhibit 10 contract remains on his team’s roster through that Monday without being converted to a two-way, his Exhibit 10 deal would become a standard non-guaranteed contract.
Since most players on Exhibit 10 contracts will be waived on or before October 19, it’s worth keeping tabs on which of them hang onto their roster spots through that Saturday — those players will be good bets to have their deals converted into two-ways or perhaps even to claim a 15-man roster spot.
Contract extensions
The deadline for a player to sign a rookie scale extension is Monday, October 21 at 5:00 pm Central time.
As of today, four of the 24 players who were eligible for a rookie scale extension entering the offseason have signed one, leaving 20 players who still may be seeking new deals that would keep them off the 2024 free agent market.
Rockets center Alperen Sengun, Pelicans wing Trey Murphy, Hawks forward Jalen Johnson, and Warriors forward Jonathan Kuminga are a few of the notable rookie scale extension candidates to keep an eye on in the coming weeks.
It’s a safe bet that several players eligible for rookie scale extensions will sign them — in each of the past four offseasons (2020 through 2023), at least 10 players have done so, with a record-setting 14 rookie scale extensions signed a year ago.
As for veteran extension candidates, a player who is extension-eligible and who is in the final year of his current contract can sign an extension at any time before or after the regular season begins, all the way up until June 30, 2025.
However, a player who is eligible for a veteran extension but who is not in a contract year will only be eligible to sign a new deal up until Monday, October 21.
For instance, Pelicans forward Brandon Ingram will remain eligible to sign a veteran extension even after the regular season begins, since he’s in the last year of his current contract. But Suns forward Kevin Durant, who has two guaranteed years left, can only sign an extension up until Oct. 21. After that, he’ll become ineligible to sign a new deal until next summer.
An extension-eligible veteran who holds an option for 2025/26 will remain extension-eligible after the season begins as long as his option is declined as part of any extension agreement, with his new contract beginning in ’25/26. A player like Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon would fit this bill.
Salary guarantee dates
The league-wide salary guarantee date to watch is January 7, 2025. A player on a non-guaranteed contract who isn’t waived by that date and doesn’t clear waivers before January 10 will have his 2024/25 salary become fully guaranteed.
However, certain players have contracts that call for them to receive partial or full guarantees at the start of the regular season. Our list of early salary guarantee dates shows which players fall into that boat on Tuesday, October 22, including Raptors center Bruno Fernando and Trail Blazers guard Dalano Banton, among others.
Rookie scale team option decisions
A team that wants to exercise its 2025/26 third- or fourth-year option on a player on a rookie contract must do so on or before Tuesday, October 31.
As our tracker shows, the Bulls and Heat have already made their option decisions, while the Celtics, Cavaliers, Timberwolves, Knicks, Sixers, and Suns don’t have any to make. But the NBA’s other 22 teams will have to pick up or turn down those rookie scale team options for ’25/26 in the coming weeks.
A team that retains a player without exercising his 2025/26 option would put that player on track for unrestricted free agency next offseason. At that point, his team wouldn’t be able to offer him a salary higher than what his option would have been worth, though rival suitors could offer him more than that.