With the NBA’s league-wide salary guarantee date for 2025/26 behind us, it’s worth checking in once again on which teams have open spots on their 18-man rosters.
As our roster count tracker shows, these are the teams that don’t currently have full rosters consisting of 15 players on standard rest-of-season contracts and three on two-way deals:
Teams with standard roster openings:
- Boston Celtics
- Cleveland Cavaliers
- Denver Nuggets
- Houston Rockets
- Indiana Pacers *
- Los Angeles Clippers
- Los Angeles Lakers *
- Miami Heat
- Minnesota Timberwolves
- New York Knicks
- Orlando Magic
- Philadelphia 76ers
- Phoenix Suns
- Toronto Raptors
- Washington Wizards
The Pacers and Lakers, marked with asterisks, technically have full 15-man standard rosters at the moment, but are carrying just 14 players on full-season contracts, with one player on a 10-day deal. Tony Bradley‘s deal with Indiana will expire this weekend while Kobe Bufkin‘s with Los Angeles will expire next week, at which point each club will re-open its 15th roster spot.
Most teams in this group likely won’t sign a player to a rest-of-season or multiyear contract until sometime after the trade deadline, when they know they won’t need to use that 15th roster spot to accommodate a trade in which they acquire more players than they send out.
Some of them literally can’t sign a 15th man right now. Barring cost-cutting moves, the Lakers will have to wait until January 28 to squeeze a rest-of-season free agent addition under their first-apron hard cap, while the Knicks won’t be able to fit a non-10-day free agent under their second-apron hard cap before April 2.
In between now and the February 5 trade deadline, some of these clubs could join the Pacers and Lakers in signing free agents to 10-day contracts. However, 12 of the 15 teams listed here project to be taxpayers, so they likely won’t be eager to bring in a 15th man unless he’s actually going to play.
The Pacers, Heat, and Wizards are the three teams in this group not currently operating over the luxury tax line.
Teams with two-way openings:
- Atlanta Hawks
- Milwaukee Bucks
- New York Knicks
Each of these three teams waived a two-way player just ahead of last week’s league-wide salary guarantee deadline, so they haven’t had an open slot for long.
The deadline to sign a player to a two-way contract won’t arrive until March 4, meaning there’s no urgency for these clubs to fill their openings right away. Still, the prorated portion of a two-way salary is such a minor financial commitment for an NBA franchise that we may see one or more of these teams bring in a new two-way player sooner rather than later, even if they’re not certain he’ll hold that spot for the rest of the season.