{"id":138028,"date":"2025-09-12T15:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T15:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/138028\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T15:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T15:57:07","slug":"why-so-many-players-will-be-signed-and-waived-before-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/138028\/","title":{"rendered":"Why So Many Players Will Be Signed-And-Waived Before Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Raptors have signed three<\/a> free<\/a> agents<\/a> to their offseason roster this week. They\u2019ve also waived those same three players, with Quincy Guerrier<\/a>, Tyreke Key<\/a>, and Jarkel Joiner<\/a> each spending no more than a single day under contract with the team, despite the fact that training camp is still weeks away.<\/p>\n

There will be dozens of this sort of \u201csign-and-waive\u201d transaction completed in the next five-plus weeks before opening night \u2014 many of them will involve players who don\u2019t have a realistic path to make their team\u2019s regular season roster and won\u2019t be under contract for more than a day or two.<\/p>\n

While they may look pointless on the surface, these moves are meaningful to teams and players for a couple reasons. Here are the two reasons why you can count on seeing many more sign-and-trade moves in the coming weeks:<\/p>\n

1. In order to secure a player\u2019s G League rights<\/p>\n

Up to four players waived by a team prior to the start of the NBA regular season can be designated as \u201caffiliate players.\u201d As we explain in more detail in our glossary entry on the subject<\/a>, if a player designated as an affiliate player signs a G League contract, he\u2019s automatically assigned to that team\u2019s NBAGL squad.<\/p>\n

A player can only be made an affiliate player if his returning rights aren\u2019t already controlled by a G League team. That\u2019s why our annual list<\/a> of affiliate players around the league consists mostly of undrafted rookies and a few veterans who have never played in the NBAGL before.<\/p>\n

If a player has only ever been assigned to the G League while on a standard or two-way contract with an NBA team, his returning rights aren\u2019t controlled by that club. For example, if a team were to sign Emoni Bates<\/a> to a training camp deal this fall, it could designate him as an affiliate player, since he has only played in the G League while on a two-way contract with the Cavaliers \u2014 that means the Cleveland Charge don\u2019t control his returning rights.<\/p>\n

Sign-and-waive transactions involving players meant to be designated as affiliate players often don\u2019t occur until training camps begin, since a player is typically require to participate in at least one day of team activities in order to qualify as an affiliate player.<\/p>\n

2. In order to award a player a bonus<\/p>\n

Many of the players who are signed and immediately waived by an NBA team can\u2019t be designated as affiliate players because their G League rights are already controlled by a specific club.<\/p>\n

This applies to the three players signed-and-waived by the Raptors this week \u2014 Guerrier and Key played for the Raptors 905 last season, while Toronto\u2019s affiliate made a trade<\/a> last month to acquire Joiner\u2019s returning rights. That means if Guerrier, Key, and Joiner sign G League contracts this fall, the 905 would control them as \u201creturning rights\u201d players and wouldn\u2019t have to use one of their four \u201caffiliate player\u201d slots to retain them.<\/p>\n

The Raptors didn\u2019t need to sign Guerrier, Key, and Joiner to contracts to acquire their G League rights, but giving them non-guaranteed Exhibit 10<\/a> deals will allow Toronto to award those players some bonus money on top of their standard G League base salaries.<\/p>\n

A player who signs an Exhibit 10 contract and then is waived before the season will earn his Exhibit 10 bonus if he spends at least 60 days with his team\u2019s G League affiliate. This season, the maximum Exhibit 10 bonus amount is $85,300. Since those bonuses don\u2019t count against the cap, they serve as a way for teams to reward or incentivize a player who joins their G League affiliates instead of seeking another opportunity, perhaps overseas.<\/p>\n

The majority of players who sign Exhibit 10 contracts are awarded the maximum allowable bonus ($85,300), but some G League role players will agree to receive bonuses that come in below that max. For example, Key \u2013 who averaged just 17.3 minutes per game during the NBAGL regular season in 2024\/25 \u2013 agreed to a bonus worth just $35K, Hoops Rumors has learned.<\/p>\n

Still, even a modest Exhibit 10 bonus represents a significant raise for a player who signs a G League contract. Shams Charania of ESPN reported<\/a> in the fall of 2022 that the base NBAGL salary at that time was $40,500. It\u2019s possible that figure has increased slightly since then, but it\u2019s still just a small fraction of what a player would earn on a standard \u2013 or even a two-way \u2013 NBA contract. An Exhibit 10 bonus could double or even triple a G League player\u2019s earnings for that season.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that if the Raptors hadn\u2019t acquired Joiner\u2019s returning rights from the Hawks\u2019 G League affiliate, they wouldn\u2019t be in position to carry him on the 905\u2019s roster or give him an Exhibit 10 bonus. If an NBA team signs and waives a player whose NBAGL rights are held by another organization, it\u2019s generally a safe bet that a G League trade to acquire that player\u2019s returning rights is in the works.<\/p>\n

While only some of the many sign-and-waive transactions that occur between now and the start of the regular season are about acquiring a player\u2019s NBAGL rights, nearly all of them will involve lining up some bonus money for a player ticketed for the G League.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Raptors have signed three free agents to their offseason roster this week. They\u2019ve also waived those same…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,68173,590,94807,85,94808],"class_list":{"0":"post-138028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-jarkel-joiner","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-quincy-guerrier","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tyreke-key"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}