The Bird exception, named after Larry Bird, is a rule included in the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement that allows teams to go over the salary cap to re-sign their own players. A player who qualifies for the Bird exception, formally referred to as a Qualifying Veteran Free Agent, is said to have “Bird rights.”
The most basic way for a player to earn Bird rights is to play for the same team for at least three seasons, either on a long-term deal or on separate one- or two-year contracts. Still, there are other criteria. A player retains his Bird rights in the following scenarios:
1. He changes teams via trade.
For instance, the Warriors will hold Kristaps Porzingis‘ Bird rights when he reaches free agency this offseason, despite just acquiring him in February. His Bird clock didn’t reset when he was traded from Atlanta to Golden State.
2. He finishes a third season with a team after having only signed for a partial season with the club in the first year.
The Wizards signed Tristan Vukcevic during the second half of the 2023/24 season, adding him to their roster in March 2024. If his contract were expiring this offseason, Vukcevic would have Bird rights despite not spending three full seasons with Washington, because that partial season in ’23/24 started his Bird clock.
3. He signs a full-season contract (ie. not a 10-day deal), his team waives him, and he cleared waivers. He subsequently re-signs with the club (without joining another team in the interim) and ultimately remains under contract through a third season.
This one’s a little confusing, but let’s use a hypothetical scenario involving Pistons forward Tobias Harris to illustrate what it would look like. Harris signed with Detroit as a free agent in 2024 and is nearing the end of his second season with the team.
If the Pistons were to waive Harris now, then re-signed him in July without him joining a new team in the interim, his Bird clock would pick up where it left off. He’d have full Bird rights in the summer of 2027, since he would’ve spent part or all of each of the previous three seasons with the Pistons without changing teams in between.
Although the Pistons could restart Harris’ Bird clock by re-signing him, they wouldn’t be able to use any form of Bird rights to add him to their roster this offseason in this hypothetical scenario — they would have to use cap room or another exception to do so. His Bird clock would only resume once he’s back under contract.
This rule also applies to players who are waived after they already have Bird rights. For example, let’s say the Kings were to waive DeMar DeRozan this offseason before his $25.74MM salary for 2026/27 becomes guaranteed. Releasing DeRozan would mean losing his Bird rights, but if they were to re-add him on a one-year contract after waiving him, the Kings would regain those full Bird rights in 2027.
That’s not really a realistic scenario for DeRozan, who would almost certainly join a new team if he were waived by the Kings. But it’s an example of how Bird rights would function in that sort of situation.
A player sees the clock on his Bird rights reset to zero in the following scenarios:
- He changes teams via free agency.
- He is waived and is not claimed on waivers (except as in scenario No. 3 above).
- His rights are renounced by his team. However, as in scenario No. 3 above, a player’s Bird clock picks up where it left off if he re-signs with the club that renounced them without having signed with another NBA team. For example, Kelly Oubre Jr. had his rights renounced by the Sixers during the summer of 2024, following his first year with the team. He signed a new deal with Philadelphia later that offseason, so his Bird clock picked up where it left off, and he’s on track to have full Bird rights this summer, two years later.
- He is selected in an expansion draft.
Players on two-way contracts accumulate Bird rights in the same way that players on standard contracts do. Knicks guard Kevin McCullar Jr. has been under contract with New York on two-way deals in each of the past two seasons. If he were to sign another one-year, two-way deal this summer and then reached free agency in 2027, he’d have full Bird rights at that time.
If a player who would have been in line for Bird rights at the end of the season is waived and claimed off waivers, he would retain only Early Bird rights.
It’s also worth noting that there’s one specific scenario in which a player with Bird rights can lose them in a trade. A player who re-signs with his previous team on a one-year contract (or a one-year deal with a second-year option) would have his Bird clock reset if he’s traded later that season. As such, he receives the ability to veto trades so he can avoid that scenario, though a team can require him to waive that right as a condition of their contract agreement.
[RELATED: Players who had the ability to veto trades in 2025/26]
Jonathan Kuminga is an example of a player who lost his Bird rights as a result of this rule, since he re-signed last summer with the Warriors on a deal that included a second-year team option, then was traded to the Hawks last month. He’ll have Non-Bird rights at the end of this season if Atlanta declines that team option for 2026/27.
The Bird exception was designed to allow teams to keep their best players, even when those teams don’t have the cap room necessary to do so.
When a player earns Bird rights, he’s eligible to re-sign with his team for up to five years and for any price up to his maximum salary (with 8% annual raises) when he becomes a free agent, no matter how much cap space the team has — or doesn’t have.
The maximum salary varies from player to player depending on how long he has been in the league, but regardless of the precise amount, a team can exceed the salary cap to re-sign a player with Bird rights.
A team with a Bird free agent is assigned a “free agent amount” – also called a cap hold – worth either 190% of his previous salary (for a player with a salary below the league average) or 150% of his previous salary (for an above-average salary), up to the maximum salary amount.
For players coming off rookie scale contracts, the amounts of those cap holds are 300% and 250%, respectively. The Pistons, for instance, will have a cap hold worth $19,449,432 for Jalen Duren on their books this offseason — 300% of his $6,483,144 salary for 2025/26.
Detroit could renounce Duren and generate nearly $20MM in additional cap flexibility, but doing so would cost the Pistons the ability to re-sign him using Bird rights, which would force them to use either cap room or a different cap exception to re-sign him. As such, we can count on the Pistons keeping Duren’s cap hold on their books until his free agency is resolved.
Note: This is a Hoops Rumors Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to trades, free agency, or other aspects of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ was used in the creation of this post.
Earlier versions of this post were published in previous years by Luke Adams and Chuck Myron.