Hoops Rumors Originals

Players and teams have to meet certain criteria to earn Bird rights and Early Bird rights, but Non-Bird rights are something of a given. They apply to a player who has spent a single season or less with his team, as long as he finishes the season on an NBA roster. Teams can also claim Non-Bird rights on Early Bird free agents if they renounce them. The primary utility in doing so would be so that the team could sign the free agent to a one-year contract, a move that’s not permitted via Early Bird rights.

Teams are eligible to sign their own free agents using the Non-Bird exception for a salary starting at 120% of the player’s previous salary, 120% of the minimum salary, or the amount of a qualifying offer (if the player is a restricted free agent), whichever is greatest. Contracts can be for up to four years, with 5% annual raises.

The cap hold for a Non-Bird player is 120% of his previous salary, unless the previous salary was the minimum. In that case, the cap hold is equivalent to the two-year veteran’s minimum salary, which in 2018/19 will be $1,499,698.

The salary limitations that apply to Non-Bird rights are more severe than those pertaining to Bird rights or Early Bird rights, so in many cases, the Non-Bird exception isn’t enough to retain a well-regarded free agent. For instance, the Heat had Non-Bird rights for James Johnson and Dion Waiters this past summer, since those players had signed one-year deals with Miami in 2016.

The Heat technically would have been able to use Non-Bird rights to go over the cap to sign Johnson and Waiters, but because their 2016/17 salaries were only about $4MM and $3MM, respectively, the club’s ability to offer raises using the Non-Bird exception was extremely limited — 120% of Johnson’s previous salary was just $4.8MM, which wouldn’t have been a competitive offer. In order to get up to the $14MM and $11MM respective starting salaries that Johnson and Waiters received on their new contracts, Miami had to use cap space.

Holding Non-Bird rights on their top free agents didn’t help the Heat, but there are cases in which the exception proves useful. Nene, for example, signed a three-year, $10.95MM deal with the Rockets this offseason using his Non-Bird rights. Nene had initially signed a one-year, $2,898,000 contract with Houston in 2016, so the Non-Bird exception allowed the team to give him 120% of that amount ($3,477,600) in the first year of his new contract, without having to dip into the mid-level or bi-annual exception.

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 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 by Luke Adams and Chuck Myron.

Bird rights offer teams the chance to sign their own free agents without regard to the salary cap, but they don’t apply to every player. Other salary cap exceptions are available for teams to keep players who don’t qualify for Bird rights. One such exception is the Early Bird, which applies to players formally known as Early Qualifying Veteran Free Agents.

The Bird exception is for players who have spent three seasons with one club without changing teams as a free agent, but Early Bird rights are earned after just two such seasons. Virtually all of the same rules that apply to Bird rights apply to Early Bird rights, with the requirements condensed to two years rather than three. Players still see their Bird clocks restart by changing teams via free agency, being claimed in an expansion draft, or having their rights renounced.

The crucial difference between Bird rights and Early Bird rights involves the limitations on contract offers. Bird players can receive maximum-salary deals for up to five years, while the most a team can offer an Early Bird free agent without using cap space is 175% of his previous salary or 105% of the league-average salary in the previous season, whichever is greater. These offers are also capped at four years rather than five, and the new contracts must run for at least two years (with no second-year options).

Kevin Durant (Warriors), Patrick McCaw (Warriors), and Seth Curry (Mavericks) are among the notable free agents who will have Early Bird rights at the end of the 2017/18 season. In Durant’s case, the Warriors would be able to offer 175% of his current $25MM salary using Early Bird rights, though the team’s offer can’t exceed the maximum salary. Durant’s max salary projects to be just over $35MM, comfortably within the Early Bird limit. However, he would only be able to sign a four-year contract rather than a five-year deal, since he won’t have full Bird rights.

In some instances, teams can benefit from having Early Bird rights instead of full Bird rights if they’re trying to preserve cap space. The cap hold for an Early Bird player is 130% of his previous salary, significantly less than most Bird players, whose cap holds range from 150-300% of their previous salaries.

That helps the Mavericks, since the cap hold for Curry, who is earning just over $3MM this season, will only be about $4MM. If the Mavs reach an agreement to re-sign Curry next July, they could hold off on making it official, keeping his modest cap holds on the books until they use the rest of their cap room. Then they could go over the cap to finalize Curry’s deal using the Early Bird exception.

As for McCaw, he’ll be subject to a special wrinkle involving Early Bird rights, called the Gilbert Arenas Provision, which applies to players who’ve only been in the league for one or two years. We cover the Gilbert Arenas Provision in a separate glossary entry (that glossary entry will soon be updated to reflect changes made in the 2017 CBA, but most of the basic details remain the same).

Finally, one more distinction between Bird rights and Early Bird rights applies to waivers. Players who are claimed off waivers retain their Early Bird rights, just as they would if they were traded. Those who had Bird rights instead see those reduced to Early Bird rights if they’re claimed off waivers. This rule stems from a 2012 settlement between the league and the union in which J.J. Hickson was given a special exception and retained his full Bird rights for the summer of 2012 even though he had been claimed off waivers that March.

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 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 by Luke Adams and Chuck Myron.

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, as most NBA fans know. 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 multiyear deal or separate one-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 Pelicans hold DeMarcus Cousins‘ Bird rights as he approaches 2018 free agency, despite just acquiring him in February. His Bird clock didn’t reset when he was traded from Sacramento to New Orleans.
2. He finishes a third season with a team after having only signed for a partial season with the club in the first year. Sean Kilpatrick signed his current contract with the Nets in March of 2016. It’s only a two-year deal, so Kilpatrick won’t qualify for full Bird rights this season, but that 2015/16 season counts as the first year on his Bird clock, even though he was only under contract with the club for about a month.
3. He signed for a full season in year one or two but the team waived him, he cleared waivers, and didn’t sign with another team before re-signing with the club and remaining under contract through a third season. For instance, the Sixers waived Gerald Henderson in June after he spent a single season in Philadelphia. If the club were to re-sign Henderson at some point this season, his Bird clock would move to a second year, rather than resetting.

A player sees the clock on his Bird rights reset to zero in the following scenarios:

1. He changes teams via free agency.
2. He is waived and is not claimed on waivers (except as in scenario No. 3 above).
3. His rights are renounced by his team. However, his Bird rights are restored if he re-signs with that team without having signed with another NBA team. Shabazz Muhammad (Timberwolves) and Udonis Haslem (Heat) were among the free agents who were renounced by their respective teams this past offseason before re-signing with those clubs. They’ve retained their Bird rights.
4. He is selected in an expansion draft.

If a player is waived and claimed off waivers, and he would have been in line for Bird rights at the end of the season, he would retain only Early Bird rights. Meanwhile, a player with Bird rights who re-signs with his previous team on a one-year contract (or a one-year deal with a second-year option) would lose his Bird rights if he’s traded. As such, he receives the ability to veto trades so he can avoid that scenario.

When a player earns Bird rights, he’s eligible to re-sign with his team on a maximum-salary contract for up to five years with 8% annual raises when he becomes a free agent, regardless of how much cap room the team has. The maximum salary will vary for each player depending on how long he has been in the league, but regardless of the amount, a team can exceed the salary cap to complete the deal.

A team with a Bird free agent is assigned a “free agent amount” or cap hold worth either 190% of his previous salary (for a player with a below-average salary) 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 Bulls, for instance, will have a cap hold worth about $9.6MM for Zach LaVine on their 2018/19 books — 300% of his $3.2MM salary for 2017/18. Chicago could renounce LaVine and clear an extra $9.6MM in cap space, but the Bulls would lose his Bird rights if they did that, which would force them to use either cap room or a different cap exception to re-sign him.

Instead, the Bulls will likely use LaVine’s Bird rights and his cap hold strategically, perhaps using their cap space on other free agents and/or trades while LaVine’s $9.6MM cap hold remains on the books. The Bulls could then circle back and use Bird rights to sign LaVine to a contract with a starting salary much higher than $9.6MM.

Ultimately, the Bird exception was designed to allow teams to keep their best players. The CBA ensures that teams are always able to re-sign them to contracts up to the maximum salary, assuming the player is interested in returning and his team is willing to go over the cap.

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 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 by Luke Adams and Chuck Myron.