Author: Luke Adams

Most NBA clubs will enter this year’s free agent period without any cap room, but each of the league’s 30 franchises will be on common ground in one respect: No team will be ineligible to sign a player to a minimum salary contract.

Teams with cap room available will have a little more flexibility to sign players to longer-term minimum salary contracts, but over-the-cap clubs will still be able to use the minimum salary exception to add as many players as roster limits allow, for contracts of up to two years. Unlike other exceptions, such as the mid-level or the bi-annual, the minimum salary exception can be used multiple times.

[RELATED: Values of 2020/21 mid-level, bi-annual exceptions]

Undrafted free agents and late second-round picks are often recipients of minimum salary contracts, but there are plenty of veterans who end up settling for the minimum too. Because a player’s minimum salary is determined by how much NBA experience he has, many veterans will earn more than twice as much money as a rookie will in 2020/21 on a minimum salary contract.

Listed below are 2020/21’s minimum salary figures, sorted by years of NBA experience. If a player spent any time on an NBA club’s active regular season roster in a given season, he earned one year of experience. So any player with zero years of experience has not yet made his NBA debut.

These figures are the same as in 2019/20, since the NBA has artificially set its ’20/21 salary cap to match last season’s.

Here’s the full breakdown:

Because the NBA doesn’t want teams to avoid signing veteran players in favor of cheaper, younger players, the league reimburses clubs who sign veterans with three or more years of experience to one-year, minimum salary contracts. Those deals will only count against the cap – and against a team’s bank balance – for $1,620,564, the minimum salary for a player with two years of experience.

For instance, if Courtney Lee – who has 12 years of NBA experience – signs a one-year, minimum salary contract with a new team, that team would only be charged $1,620,564 for Lee’s contract. He’d earn $2,564,753, but the NBA would make up the difference. This only applies to one-year contracts, rather than multiyear deals.

If a player signs a minimum salary contract after the regular season begins, he’ll earn a pro-rated portion of the amount listed above. Those figures also only apply to players who are signing new contracts in 2020/21. Players who are in the second, third, or fourth year of a minimum salary deal will be earning a slightly different predetermined amount.

For instance, a player like Raptors guard Terence Davis, who has one year of NBA experience, will be earning a $1,517,981 salary in the second year of his contract, exceeding the $1,445,697 he’d receive if he were signing a new minimum deal this fall. More details on multiyear minimum contracts can be found at RealGM.

The salary cap for the 2020/21 NBA league year has officially been set, with the league announcing that the cap will be $109,140,000 — the same as it was in ’19/20.

Under the league’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement, the values of the mid-level, room, and bi-annual exceptions are tied to the percentage that the salary cap shifts in a given year. Because the cap figure for 2020/21 doesn’t represent an increase or decrease, the values of the mid-level and bi-annual exceptions won’t increase or decrease either.

Listed below are the maximum annual and total values of each of these exceptions, along with a brief explanation of how they work and which teams will have access to them.

Mid-Level Exception (Non-Taxpayer):

The non-taxpayer mid-level exception is the primary tool available for over-the-cap teams to add free agents. As long as a team hasn’t dipped below the cap to use cap space and doesn’t go over the tax apron ($138,928,000) at all, it can use this MLE, which runs for up to four years with 5% annual raises.

Mid-Level Exception (Taxpayer):

If an over-the-cap team currently projects to be a taxpayer, or expects to move into tax territory later in the 2020/21 season, it will have access to this smaller mid-level exception for taxpaying teams.

If a team uses more than $5,718,000 of its mid-level exception, it is forbidden from surpassing the tax apron at any time during the league year. So even if a team isn’t above the apron when it uses its MLE, it might make sense to play it safe by avoiding using the full MLE and imposing a hard cap.

The taxpayer MLE can be used to sign a player for up to three years, with 5% annual raises.

Room Exception:

Although this is also a mid-level exception of sorts, it’s colloquially known as the “room” exception, since it’s only available to teams that go below the cap and use their cap room.

If a club goes under the cap, it loses its full mid-level exception, but gets this smaller room exception, which allows the team to go over the cap to sign a player once the team has used up all its cap space. It can be used to sign players for up to two years, with a 5% raise for the second season.

Bi-Annual Exception:

The bi-annual exception, as its name suggests, is only available to teams once every two years. Of the NBA’s 30 clubs, only four – the Mavericks, Grizzlies, Pistons, and Raptors – used it in 2019/20, so they won’t have access to it in 2020/21. The league’s other 26 teams could theoretically use it this season.

Still, even if a team didn’t use its BAE in ’19/20, that club doesn’t necessarily have access to it for the coming year. As is the case with the non-taxpayer MLE, this exception disappears once a team goes under the cap. It’s also not available to teams over the tax apron — using the BAE creates a hard cap at the apron.

The BAE can be used to sign players for up to two years, with a 5% raise after year one.

Note: Be sure to check out our Hoops Rumors Glossary installments for more information on the mid-level exception and the bi-annual exception.