The Waive and Stretch: 450/450, One Day Contracts, Play In Draft Pick Stakes, And More

Apr 14, 2025

Welcome back to another edition of The Waive and Stretch Newsletter. A quick shameless plug to note that I am looking to work in basketball in any capacity and would love to connect with anyone in the industry or trying to break in. Please feel free to share this with anyone who you think might find it interesting. Let's get into it!

What Caught My Attention This Week

450 Out Of 450
With the season ending, every single team has filled out their roster completely with rest-of-season deals. By my count, there are 37 players that were signed to mid-season deals that are still under contract come season end. All 450 roster spots have been filled out, with this being the first time that happened per Bobby Marks. And for a lot of these teams, filling out their roster comes at an additional luxury tax expense for relatively low stakes transactions with respect to this year’s playoffs. Boston, New York, Golden State, Milwaukee, and the Los Angeles Lakers all filled out their roster with rest of season deals and added to their luxury tax bills when they didn’t necessarily have to.

Where these contracts could be consequential are this offseason. It seems teams really took note of the Knicks trades last offseason, who signed-and-traded two players that they had signed to rest-of-season deals during last season solely for salary matching purposes. And it seems teams may be taking the logical next step on these deals by tacking on a non-guaranteed team option for next season. Of the 37 players, 26 were multi-year deals. Generally, you don’t see veterans agree to that team option and tying down their optionality next year. But guys like PJ Tucker, Elfrid Payton, Tony Bradley, Chuma Okeke, and Lonnie Walker all agreed to it, which I think speaks to the increasing difficulty of securing roster spots these days in the League. It could also lead to these guys getting opportunities to potentially double on contracts next year, aka getting traded and partially/fully guaranteed, getting waived, then securing another contract.

Why is that important? Well, teams who take on a player via a sign-and-trade are hard-capped at the first apron. So being able to offer trades that won’t hard-cap potential trade partners could be key in future trade negotiations. Additionally, that non-guarantee could allow for exact salary matching between apron teams, something I’ve discussed before. Financial/CBA flexibility will continue to be a major motivator for teams going forward.

The Waive And Stretch: Takeaways From Free Agency So Far, Second Round Pick Guarantees

Nick Thoreson

July 6, 2024

Read full story

Three One-Day Contracts To End The Season
I was perusing the NBA transactions page to catch up on the final end of season transactions, and I noticed that there were three 10-day deals signed on the very last day of the year.

These teams were allowed to sign these despite their only being one day left and having full rosters as they were hardship deals. See below passage from Article II, Section 9(e) from the most recent CBA that details it.

So essentially, these three signed 1-day deals, something only possible on the last day of the year. All three truly were needed by their teams, as they all played at least 15 minutes the their respective teams’ season finale. Not too consequential, but just something pretty unique I noticed.

Two Things To Keep Your Eye On

1. Play-In’s Draft Pick Implications
With the season over, protections on draft picks are starting to crystallize. However, the Play-In this week still has implications on whether picks will be conveying or not. Here is what is still at stake:

Grizzlies 1st Round Pick (Lottery Protected) - If Memphis makes the playoffs, they will convey their pick to Washington. If they do not, they keep it and instead send over 2 future seconds
Heat 1st Round Pick (Lottery Protected) - If Miami makes the playoffs, they will convey their pick to OKC. If not, their 2026 1st goes unprotected to OKC, and their 2028 1st goes unprotected to Charlotte.
Kings 1st Round Pick (Top 12 Protected) - If Sacramento makes the playoffs, they will convey their pick to Atlanta. If not, they will keep it if 1-12, will still convey to Atlanta if 13-14. If not conveyed rolled over to next year top 10 protected.
Warriors 1st Round Pick (Top 10 Protected) - If Golden State makes the playoffs, they will convey their pick to Miami. If not, they will keep it if 1-10, will still convey to Miami if 11-14. If not conveyed rolled over to next year top 10 protected.

2. I Am Available For Consulting This Offseason
As we head into the offseason, draft/trade/free agency season is coming fast. I am available to consult for anyone looking for insight or second opinions on anything this summer. Feel free to reach out to me via email at thoreson.nichola@gmail.com, and feel free to keep up with my work over at duckingthetax.com. I have previously done consulting for player agents in the past and am also looking for any kind of full time work on either the team or agency side!