The Raptors have signed three free agents to their offseason roster this week. They’ve also waived those same three players, with Quincy Guerrier, Tyreke Key, and Jarkel Joiner each spending no more than a single day under contract with the team, despite the fact that training camp is still weeks away.
There will be dozens of this sort of “sign-and-waive” transaction completed in the next five-plus weeks before opening night — many of them will involve players who don’t have a realistic path to make their team’s regular season roster and won’t be under contract for more than a day or two.
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:
1. In order to secure a player’s G League rights
Up to four players waived by a team prior to the start of the NBA regular season can be designated as “affiliate players.” As we explain in more detail in our glossary entry on the subject, if a player designated as an affiliate player signs a G League contract, he’s automatically assigned to that team’s NBAGL squad.
A player can only be made an affiliate player if his returning rights aren’t already controlled by a G League team. That’s why our annual list of affiliate players around the league consists mostly of undrafted rookies and a few veterans who have never played in the NBAGL before.
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’t controlled by that club. For example, if a team were to sign Emoni Bates 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 — that means the Cleveland Charge don’t control his returning rights.
Sign-and-waive transactions involving players meant to be designated as affiliate players often don’t 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.
2. In order to award a player a bonus
Many of the players who are signed and immediately waived by an NBA team can’t be designated as affiliate players because their G League rights are already controlled by a specific club.
This applies to the three players signed-and-waived by the Raptors this week — Guerrier and Key played for the Raptors 905 last season, while Toronto’s affiliate made a trade last month to acquire Joiner’s returning rights. That means if Guerrier, Key, and Joiner sign G League contracts this fall, the 905 would control them as “returning rights” players and wouldn’t have to use one of their four “affiliate player” slots to retain them.
The Raptors didn’t need to sign Guerrier, Key, and Joiner to contracts to acquire their G League rights, but giving them non-guaranteed Exhibit 10 deals will allow Toronto to award those players some bonus money on top of their standard G League base salaries.
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’s G League affiliate. This season, the maximum Exhibit 10 bonus amount is $85,300. Since those bonuses don’t 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.
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 – who averaged just 17.3 minutes per game during the NBAGL regular season in 2024/25 – agreed to a bonus worth just $35K, Hoops Rumors has learned.
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 in the fall of 2022 that the base NBAGL salary at that time was $40,500. It’s possible that figure has increased slightly since then, but it’s still just a small fraction of what a player would earn on a standard – or even a two-way – NBA contract. An Exhibit 10 bonus could double or even triple a G League player’s earnings for that season.
It’s worth noting that if the Raptors hadn’t acquired Joiner’s returning rights from the Hawks’ G League affiliate, they wouldn’t be in position to carry him on the 905’s 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’s generally a safe bet that a G League trade to acquire that player’s returning rights is in the works.
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’s NBAGL rights, nearly all of them will involve lining up some bonus money for a player ticketed for the G League.
Thank you for this Luke. I appreciate the lengthy write up and explanation, even though I had to read it three times lol.
Really that’s a reflection on my inability to comprehend complicated matters and not a lack of a clear explanation on your part.
But for me, this excellent article still doesn’t clear up my direct question from last week, which is this…
The NBA team does not have the rights to these G league guys no matter what their G League contract or affiliation concerning the G league team is.
Unless they are 2 Way or Exhibit 10, They are free agents and can go anywhere if another NBA team wants them. Is that correct?
I’m sorry if I missed it in your article. But the dude is still a free agent in terms of the NBA, correct?
So this bonus money provided by the NBA team, who does not hold their rights, is simply an attempt to create an allegiance?
Is that how you see it?
Again, I apologize as I did last week if I’m missing something obvious, and I truly do appreciate this article as you lay everything out perfectly for us to understand the process.
Please ignore this comment and even delete it if you need to because my thickness of skull is so obvious that I’m embarrassing myself for a lack of basic reading skills.
In that case, if you save me from myself and from public ridicule, I’d appreciate if you did delete this Luke.
“Allegiance” is a fair way to put it. Using one of the Raptors examples I cited in this post, their thinking is probably something to the effect of:
“We like Quincy Guerrier and want him on our G League team, and we’re willing to give him a small bonus to keep him in our system. No team will know him better than us, and if he starts playing well enough to warrant NBA consideration, we hope that our familiarity with him (and his familiarity with our system and organization) will give us a leg up to be the ones to sign him.”
Perfect !!!
That’s exactly the answer I was looking for, but couldn’t find it anywhere.
I couldn’t see any real hard tangible benefit for shelling out $80,000 to a guy in this situation.
But the allegiance and the familiarity, on both sides, and considering the massive economy of the NBA, it’s money well spent.
I totally get it now that it’s been stated by someone who would know.
Thanks again !!
It’s better than nothing, but it seems like a convoluted system to pay guys closer to a fair value when most of the league still earns a terrible income given how much money the NBA could be sharing.
This silly contract trick doesn’t solve the problem that the G League is not creating NBA level players. You need iron to sharpen iron, but they act like random fringe NBA players dropping 20+ a night down there against guys working 2 jobs makes the NBA better. It doesn’t. Give everyone in the G League 200K a year minimum and you’d get a league worth watching.