A series of disabled player exceptions granted to teams earlier in the 2023/24 season will expire on Monday if they go unused.
The deadline to use a disabled player exception is typically March 10, but when that deadline falls on a weekend, it gets pushed to the next business day, which means teams have until March 11 this season to take advantage of their DPEs.
We go into more detail on who qualifies for disabled player exceptions and how exactly they work in our glossary entry on the subject. But essentially, if a team has a player suffer a season-ending injury prior to January 15, the exception gives that team the opportunity to add an injury replacement by either signing a player to a one-year contract, trading for a player in the final year of his contract, or placing a waiver claim on a player in the final year of his contract.
Here are the teams whose DPEs will expire if they aren’t used on Sunday or Monday:
- Chicago Bulls: $10,232,559 (Lonzo Ball) (story)
- Portland Trail Blazers: $5,785,715 (Robert Williams) (story)
- San Antonio Spurs: $1,300,000 (Charles Bassey) (story)
- Note: The Denver Nuggets also applied for a DPE worth $1,117,180 for Vlatko Cancar‘s ACL tear; it’s unclear whether or not that request was granted.
The trade deadline has passed and no players are currently on waivers, so there’s essentially just one way left for those teams with disabled player exceptions to use them: signing a free agent. However, that appears unlikely, given that the Bulls, Trail Blazers, and Spurs (as well as the Nuggets) have full rosters and haven’t shown any signs that they intend to make changes within the next 36 hours or so.
In other words, those exceptions will – in all likelihood – expire without being used.
The Grizzlies are the only team to use a disabled player exception so far this season. In a trade with Houston last month, Memphis took Victor Oladipo‘s $9.45MM expiring contract into the $12,405,000 disabled player exception that was granted as a result of Ja Morant‘s season-ending shoulder injury.
The Grizzlies traded Steven Adams to the Rockets in that deal, forfeiting a second disabled player exception (worth $6.3MM) that they received as a result of Adams’ season-ending knee injury — a DPE can’t be used after the team trades away its injured player. However, using the Morant exception to absorb Oladipo’s salary rather than matching it using Adams’ outgoing salary allowed the club to generate a new traded player exception worth Adams’ cap charge ($12.6MM).
Memphis’ use of the dpe to create a tpe (slightly higher also) is a sneaky incredible move. Overlooked by most. It extend when they can use it into the off-season and beyond as well as (correct me if I’m wrong) a dpe can only be used on a one year contract whereas a tpe can be used on a multi-year contract. Super nice underrated move.