A report on Thursday indicated that NBA teams resuming the season in Orlando will be permitted to bring 17 players, rather than 15. However, that report didn’t provide many additional details, creating uncertainty about how certain roster and eligibility rules will work this summer.
In a story for ESPN, Adrian Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks shed some more light on the roster rules that have reportedly been agreed upon, though those rules haven’t yet been officially announced. Here are a few of the highlights from ESPN’s duo:
- Free agent players will be eligible to sign into teams’ open roster spots. A previous report suggested that only players who were on NBA or G League contracts already in 2019/20 would be eligible to join teams headed to Orlando, but that won’t be the case, per ESPN and Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link). Sources tell Charania that players who signed NBA or G League contracts in previous seasons will also be eligible, meaning players like J.R. Smith or Jamal Crawford could be signed.
- Players who were in international leagues rather than the NBA in 2019/20 wouldn’t be eligible to sign with teams this summer if they didn’t have FIBA clearance when the season was suspended in March.
- The 17-man limit for Orlando is made up of a standard 15-man roster and the usual two-way roster spots. In other words, a team with 15 players on standard contracts and one on a two-way deal couldn’t sign a veteran free agent to a standard pact.
- As Woj and Marks note, that means that the Nets, who have a full roster, could designate two-way players Chris Chiozza and Jeremiah Martin to replace injured stars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, but couldn’t sign two new veterans to replace Durant and Irving without the necessary roster spots available.
- Playoff rosters will consist of 15 players — 13 active and two inactive. After the postseason starts, teams can only sign a new player if they’re replacing a player who tested positive for COVID-19. Based on previous reports, it sounds as if a player who contracts the coronavirus would become ineligible for the rest of the playoffs if his team signs a substitute player to replace him, but that’s not certain.
- If one of the 22 Orlando teams converts a two-way player to a standard contract during the late-June transaction window, that team will be able to sign a two-way player to replace him, according to Woj and Marks. However, the eight teams not resuming play won’t be allowed to sign players to two-way deals during that time.
These rules aren’t yet finalized and some will require further clarification. For instance, it remains unclear if a player like Thunder wing Luguentz Dort will need to have his two-way deal converted into a standard contract to participate in the playoffs. According to Andrew Greif of The Los Angeles Times, it sounds like that wouldn’t be necessary — the expectation, Greif says, is that two-way players will be eligible for the playoffs if designated as one of their team’s 15 postseason players.
With the proposed June 22 transaction window inching closer, it should just be a matter of time before the NBA finalizes and announces its roster rules for the summer.