NBA Buyout Market: How Buyouts, Waivers and March 1 Work

The NBA buyout market is the late-season trade in veterans who negotiate their way off one team and onto another. A buyout is a negotiated release under the collective bargaining agreement between the National Basketball Association and the National Basketball Players Association: the player agrees to give back part of the guaranteed money left on his contract, the team places him on waivers, and if no club claims him inside 48 hours he is a free agent who can sign anywhere. One date shapes the whole thing. A player has to be waived on or before March 1 to be eligible for the playoffs with a new team, so nearly all of the business is done in the three weeks between the February trade deadline and that night. Since 2023 a second rule has mattered almost as much: teams above the first apron cannot sign a bought-out player whose old salary was bigger than the mid-level exception.

When it works the way contenders hope, it looks like Peja Stojakovic's 2011. In January the Toronto Raptors let go the 33-year-old shooter they had taken on in a trade two months earlier and barely used. Within days he was a Dallas Maverick. That May he made all six of his three-pointers in the game that completed a sweep of the Lakers, and in June he had a championship ring. Toronto was still paying him.

What a buyout is in the NBA, in one transaction

The collective bargaining agreement has no chapter called "buyouts." What it has is a waiver procedure, a rule that guaranteed salary survives a waiver, and a provision letting a team and a player agree to reduce that guarantee at the moment the team requests waivers on him. Put those together and the result is what everyone calls a buyout.

The order of events is fixed. First the two sides agree on a number, which is the amount of remaining salary the player will forgo. Then the team requests waivers. The reduction takes effect only if he goes unclaimed, because a team that claims him inherits the original contract as it stood before the negotiation. Once the claim period has run out, the contract is terminated, the old team owes the reduced balance, and the player is an unrestricted free agent.

Two things follow from that structure and both are easy to miss. A buyout is voluntary on each side: a team cannot force a player to surrender a dollar, and a player cannot force a team to let him go. And the player's next employer has no part in the transaction at all. League rules against tampering mean a contender is not supposed to line up a deal with a player who is still under contract elsewhere, which is why the public sequence is always buyout first, clearing second, announcement of a new team third. That the destination is often an open secret by step one is another matter.

1. 1AgreementThe player and his team settle how much of his remaining guaranteed salary he will give back.
2. 2Waiver requestThe team asks the league office to place him on waivers. For playoff eligibility this must happen on or before March 1.
3. 3Claim periodFor 48 hours any team with the means to absorb his original contract may claim it. Priority goes to the team with the worst record.
4. 4ClearingIf nobody claims him, the contract is terminated. The old team owes the reduced balance and carries it on its cap.
5. 5Free agencyHe is an unrestricted free agent and may talk to every team allowed to sign him.
6. 6New contractHe signs a new deal, usually a prorated minimum that runs to the end of the season.

The standard sequence for an NBA buyout under the collective bargaining agreement. The salary reduction is conditional on the player clearing waivers.

A buyout does not have to happen in February. Teams and players reach them in the summer and in training camp too, and the mechanics are identical. Kemba Walker left Oklahoma City that way in the 2021 offseason and signed with the Knicks. What makes late February different is the calendar pressing on both parties at once.

What the player gives back, and why the number tracks the minimum

Nobody surrenders salary out of generosity. The usual buyout figure is set by a simple piece of arithmetic: the player gives back roughly what he expects to earn from his next team for the rest of the season, so that he ends the year with about as much money as he started out owed.

Take a veteran in the last year of his deal with a quarter of the season left. His current team owes him the final quarter of his salary. A contender is prepared to give him a minimum contract, and minimum contracts signed during the season are prorated by the day, so with a quarter of the schedule remaining he would collect about a quarter of the minimum for his years of service. He agrees to give his old team that amount. The old team saves it; the new team pays it; his bank balance is unchanged. He has traded 20 games on a lottery team for a playoff run at no cost to himself.

That is the baseline, and the real negotiations depart from it in both directions.

When players give back more

A player with another season left on his contract is bargaining over a much larger sum, and the team has less reason to hurry. Blake Griffin had a full year remaining in Detroit when he negotiated his way out in 2021, and he surrendered far more than a minimum salary to do it. The logic for the player is that he can earn some of it back on the open market that summer, and that a spring spent playing meaningful games improves his next contract more than a spring spent inactive.

When players give back less

A team that badly wants the roster spot, or one that acquired the player only as salary ballast in a trade and never intended to dress him, has little leverage. Some buyouts are close to symbolic. And a club sometimes waives a player with no reduction at all, which is not a buyout in any sense, though broadcasters use the word for it anyway.

On the old team's books, whatever he gives up comes off the cap charge as well as off the bill.

The waiver step: 48 hours, claim order and why big contracts go unclaimed

Every released player goes through waivers. The bought-out star and the 15th man cut to make room for him sit on the same list.

The claim period is 48 hours, so a player waived on a Monday clears on Wednesday. During the window all 30 teams can see the contract, and any of them with a legal way to absorb it can put in a claim.

If more than one team claims a player, the one with the worst record gets him. Early in the season the previous year's standings are used, and once the season is under way the current ones take over. The order is the reverse of what the buyout market later becomes. Waivers give first call to the weakest teams. Free agency after clearing gives first call to whoever the player likes best, and that is rarely the weakest team.

A claim is a full assumption of the contract. The claiming team takes the salary, the cap charge and every remaining year exactly as they were before any buyout was discussed. To do that it needs one of a short list of tools.

Way of making a claim	What it lets a team absorb
Cap room	Any contract whose salary fits under the salary cap
Traded player exception	A contract that fits inside the value of the exception
Minimum salary exception	A minimum-salary contract of one or two seasons
Disabled player exception	A player in the final season of his contract, within the exception's value

Run a typical buyout candidate against that table. He earns $20 million or more. By late February almost no team has cap room, trade exceptions that large are scarce, and the clubs that hold one would be paying full price for a player they could sign for the minimum two days later. So the claim never comes. It is the expensive contract that protects the player's freedom to choose.

The players who do get claimed are the cheap ones. The Knicks picked up Jeremy Lin on a waiver claim in December 2011, on a minimum deal that cost them nothing to absorb, six weeks before he became the biggest story in the sport. Agents know this, and it is one reason a low-salaried veteran sometimes prefers to stay put rather than risk being claimed by a team he did not pick.

There is no veto. A claimed player reports to the claiming team or does not get paid.

Waived, released, bought out, stretched: four terms that are not interchangeable

Transaction reports use these words loosely. The agreement does not, and the differences show up on the old team's cap sheet.

Waived is the formal act. A team requests waivers, the league notifies the other clubs, and the 48 hours begin. Every other term on this list is a variety of waiver or a consequence of one.

Released is what a player is once he has cleared. The NBA has no separate release procedure. That is a football distinction, and it is explained further down. In basketball a "released" player is simply a waived player nobody claimed.

Bought out means waived with an agreed reduction in the guaranteed salary. The reduction is the only thing separating it from an ordinary waiver.

Stretched refers to how the remaining money is charged against the cap. A team that waives a player may elect to spread what it still owes him over twice the number of seasons left on the contract, plus one. The total paid does not change. The yearly charge falls and the dead money lasts longer. A buyout and a stretch can be combined: the player gives some money back and the team spreads the rest.

What happened to the player	What the old team still pays	What sits on the old team's cap
Waived and claimed	Nothing further	Nothing; the claiming team takes the whole contract
Waived and cleared, guaranteed deal	All remaining guaranteed salary	The full remaining amount, as dead money
Bought out and cleared	Remaining guaranteed salary minus the amount he gave back	The reduced amount
Waived, cleared and stretched	The same total, paid over a longer period	A smaller charge in each of more seasons
Waived on a non-guaranteed deal	Only what he had earned to that date	Only the earned portion

The last row explains a different burst of activity earlier in the winter. Contracts that are not fully guaranteed become guaranteed for the season on January 10, so teams cut those players a few days before. That clearing-out is what opens the roster places later filled by 10-day signings and, in February, by bought-out veterans.

The stretch election has its own timing rule, which matters to a February buyout. A player waived during the season cannot have that season's salary stretched; only the later years can be spread. For a veteran in the last year of his contract there is nothing left to stretch at all. The wider system of dead money is laid out in our explainer on how the NBA salary cap works.

The March 1 line and the NBA playoff-eligibility waiver deadline

The rule is one sentence long. A player who is waived after March 1 cannot play in the postseason for any other team that season.

Everything else about the date is a consequence of reading that sentence carefully. It attaches to the waiver, so the buyout agreement has to be finished and the request filed with the league by the end of the day on March 1, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. The player does not need to have cleared by then. He does not need to have signed anywhere. He only needs to have been cut loose.

The signing can wait much longer. A player waived in time may join a new club at any point up to the last day of the regular season and be on the floor for Game 1. Most sign within a week, because a contender wants him to learn the defensive calls before April, but a few hold out to see which roster develops an injury.

• 48Hours a player spends on waivers
• 1Last day in March to be waived and stay playoff-eligible
• 15Standard contracts a team may carry
• 12Months before a team that traded him may re-sign him

Fixed features of the waiver and buyout rules under the collective bargaining agreement. The March date has been moved in seasons with an altered calendar.

The line catches only players cut from NBA rosters. Somebody who has been out of the league all winter, or playing overseas, or in the G League without an NBA contract, has no waiver date to worry about and can sign in April with full eligibility.

The date is a convention of the standard calendar, and the league moves it when the calendar breaks. In the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season it fell later in March, which is how Boris Diaw could be let go by Charlotte in the second half of that month and still play in that year's playoffs for San Antonio. In 2020-21, a season that began in December, it was moved into April.

Why have the line at all? Without it a team eliminated in April could hand its best veteran to a contender for the price of a minimum contract the day before the playoffs began. March 1 forces the decision while there is still a quarter of the season to play and while most teams can at least pretend to be in a race. It sits about three weeks behind the cutoff described in our guide to how the NBA trade deadline works, and the gap is deliberate: clubs try to trade a veteran first, and negotiate a buyout only once that has failed.

Who can shop the NBA buyout market: a roster spot, an exception and a pitch

A contender needs two things before it can make a call, and neither is glamorous.

The first is a vacancy. A team may carry 15 players on standard contracts and no more, so a club already at the limit has to waive someone, and if that someone has guaranteed money left the team pays it. Front offices that expect to be buyers often leave the last place empty in February for this reason, or fill it with short-term deals that can be allowed to lapse. Our guide to how many players an NBA roster holds covers the limits in full.

The second is a legal way to pay him. Contenders are over the cap by definition, so they need an exception.

Tool	What it offers in late February	How often it is used
Minimum salary exception	A prorated minimum for the player's years of service; available to every team, any number of times	The standard buyout contract
Leftover mid-level exception	More than the minimum, if a team did not spend its whole mid-level in the summer	Occasionally, to win a bidding contest
Bi-annual exception	A smaller sum than the mid-level, for teams below the first apron that kept it	Rarely
Disabled player exception	Granted to replace a player lost for the season; it expires in March	Rarely
Cap room	Whatever space remains	Almost never; contenders have none

The mid-level and bi-annual exceptions shrink by the day from January 10 onward, so even an untouched one is worth much less by the end of February than it was in July. That is part of why most buyout signings are prorated minimums. The other part is that the minimum is usually enough. The player has already been paid, by his old team, and the new contract was priced into the buyout before he agreed to it.

There is a quirk in how minimum deals for veterans are charged. A one-year minimum contract for a player with three or more years of service counts on the signing team's cap at the lower two-year veteran rate, and the league covers the difference. A ten-year veteran therefore costs a contender no more in cap and tax terms than a third-year player would.

One group of teams is locked out by a separate clause. A club that traded a player away cannot re-sign him after his new team waives him until a year has passed since the trade, or until the July 1 after his contract would have expired if that comes first. The rule dates from the 2011 agreement. In February 2010 Cleveland had sent Zydrunas Ilgauskas to Washington as matching salary in a deadline trade, Washington bought him out, and he was back with the Cavaliers a month later. The league decided that a trade in which the outgoing player comes straight home was not really a trade.

With the vacancy and the exception in hand, what remains is recruiting. Minutes, a defined role, a real chance at a title, a coach the player trusts. He is choosing, and money is not what he is choosing on.

The apron rule that shrank the market

The 2023 collective bargaining agreement took the richest teams out of the top end of the market with a single test.

A team whose payroll is above the first apron may not sign a player who was waived during the regular season if his salary for that season, before the waiver, was greater than the non-taxpayer mid-level exception. The threshold was about $12.4 million in 2023-24, the first season the rule applied, and it rises each year with the cap. The test looks at the old contract. What the new team proposes to pay him is irrelevant, so offering the minimum does not get around it.

1. 1Was he waived during the regular season?If he was let go in the offseason, the restriction does not apply and any team with a roster spot may sign him.
2. 2Was his old salary above the non-taxpayer mid-level?If it was at or below that figure, every team may sign him, including teams over both aprons.
3. 3Is the signing team above the first apron?If it is, the signing is not allowed. No exception or minimum contract changes that.
4. 4Would the signing lift the team over the first apron?A team below the line that signs such a player must stay under the first apron for the rest of that league year.
5. 5Did this team trade him earlier?If so, it must wait a year from the trade whatever its payroll.

The first-apron restriction introduced by the 2023 collective bargaining agreement. It applies to players waived during the regular season.

Consider who that removes. The teams above the first apron in any given February are, with few exceptions, the teams with the most stars and the deepest playoff ambitions. Before 2023 they were the natural buyers. Their mid-level money was already spent, they had nothing to offer but a minimum deal, and the buyout market let them add a former All-Star anyway. The new rule closed that door on exactly the players worth chasing: a veteran earning $25 million is over the threshold by a distance.

Kyle Lowry in 2024 showed how the sorting now works. Miami traded him to Charlotte in January, Charlotte had no use for a 37-year-old point guard, and the two sides agreed to part. His salary was far above the mid-level, so the apron teams could not bid. He signed with Philadelphia, his hometown club, which was under the line.

The rule leaves two openings. Players whose old salaries were at or below the mid-level remain available to everybody, so the market has shifted toward cheaper role players. And a team hovering near the first apron can still sign a big-salary buyout if it is under the line and stays there, though doing so fixes the apron as a ceiling it cannot cross for the remainder of the year. The apron system as a whole, including the harsher second tier, is covered in our explainer on the NBA's second apron.

The clause has done what it was written to do. Buyout season is quieter than it was in 2021, and the names are smaller.

Why a team pays a player to leave

From the outside a buyout can look like a team throwing away an asset. Usually the asset was already gone.

Money. Whatever the player surrenders is cash the owner keeps. For a team just above the luxury-tax line the saving can be multiplied several times over, because dropping below the line removes the tax bill entirely and makes the club eligible for a share of the tax paid by others. A buyout that trims a payroll by a small amount in the right spot can be worth far more than its face value.

A roster place. A rebuilding team in March wants its 15th spot for a player who might be on the roster in two years. Clearing a veteran lets it promote someone from a two-way deal or run through a series of 10-day auditions.

Minutes. A coach cannot develop a 21-year-old guard from the bench, and cannot easily bench a respected 34-year-old who is still on the roster and still wants to play. Removing the veteran removes the problem. A team with a lottery pick to protect has no objection to the side effect of losing a few more games.

Reputation. This one is real, though it is hard to measure. Agents remember which front offices let a client go to a contender and which ones made him sit at home through March. The next time that agent has a free agent with a choice to make, the memory is part of the conversation.

Many buyout candidates were never meant to play for the team that holds their contract. They arrived in a deadline trade as salary needed to make the arithmetic work, the same way Stojakovic reached Toronto and Lowry reached Charlotte. The buyout was assumed when the trade was made.

Teams do say no. A player with another year on his contract may be a useful trade piece in the summer, when his deal becomes an expiring one. A club may not want to strengthen a rival in its own conference. Or it may simply think the player is offering too little. When talks stall, the standoff can be long. John Wall sat out the entire 2021-22 season in Houston by agreement with the team before a buyout was finally reached in the summer of 2022, and a player in that position has only one lever, which is the amount he is prepared to give up. A veteran who holds a player option for the next season has another, since declining or exercising it changes what the team stands to save.

Set-off: how the old team's bill shrinks when he signs elsewhere

The collective bargaining agreement does not let a waived player collect two full salaries without limit. It gives the old team a right of set-off, a reduction in what it owes based on what the player earns from his next contract.

The formula is modest. Take the player's new salary. Subtract the minimum salary for a one-year veteran, prorated the same way if the new deal is for part of a season. Halve what is left. That half is the set-off, and it comes off both the old team's remaining payments and its cap charge.

Owed by the old team after the buyout6million dollars

New prorated minimum contract0.9million dollars

One-year veteran minimum, prorated the same way0.5million dollars

Set-off credited to the old team0.2million dollars

Invented round figures to show the arithmetic, not any real player's contract. Set-off equals half of the amount by which the new salary exceeds the prorated minimum for a one-year veteran.

Show the numbers

Worked example: set-off on a veteran's new minimum contract

Item	Value
Owed by the old team after the buyout	6million dollars
New prorated minimum contract	0.9million dollars
One-year veteran minimum, prorated the same way	0.5million dollars
Set-off credited to the old team	0.2million dollars

In that example the player's new deal is worth $900,000. The comparison figure is $500,000. The difference is $400,000 and half of it is $200,000, so the old team's bill falls from $6 million to $5.8 million. The player keeps the rest of both checks.

Now look at why the clause almost never matters in February. The comparison figure is the minimum for a one-year veteran, and most bought-out players sign for a minimum of their own. A ten-year veteran's minimum is higher than a one-year veteran's, so there is some set-off, but it is half of a small gap, prorated over the last six weeks of a season. For a younger player whose own minimum is at or near the one-year figure it is close to nothing.

Set-off bites only when the new contract is large. A player waived in the summer with years of guaranteed money left, who then signs somewhere for the mid-level exception, hands his old team a meaningful credit. That is the situation the clause was written for.

What bought-out veterans have delivered in the playoffs

The market's reputation rests on a handful of springs.

Player	Let go by	Signed with	Season	What followed
Sam Cassell	L.A. Clippers	Boston	2007-08	Backup guard on a championship team
Peja Stojakovic	Toronto	Dallas	2010-11	Championship; a perfect shooting night to finish the Lakers
Boris Diaw	Charlotte	San Antonio	2011-12	Conference finals that year; a title with the Spurs in 2014
Markieff Morris	Detroit	L.A. Lakers	2019-20	Rotation forward on a championship team
Blake Griffin	Detroit	Brooklyn	2020-21	Lost a seven-game conference semifinal to Milwaukee
LaMarcus Aldridge	San Antonio	Brooklyn	2020-21	Five games, then retirement that April; he returned the next season
Kevin Love	Cleveland	Miami	2022-23	Started games in a run to the NBA Finals

Stojakovic is the clean case. Dallas needed shooting around Dirk Nowitzki, he supplied it for two rounds, and the game that ended the Lakers' season was the best of his short time there: 21 points without a missed three. His role had shrunk by the Finals. He got the ring regardless.

Diaw is the more interesting one, because the payoff took two years. Charlotte in 2011-12 was on its way to the worst winning percentage the league has recorded, and Diaw, out of favor with his coach, was let go in March. San Antonio put him straight into the rotation. He re-signed there, and in the 2014 Finals against Miami the Spurs moved him into the starting lineup midway through the series and ran their offense through his passing. They won in five. A buyout signing had become a foundation piece, which almost never happens.

Then there is Brooklyn in 2021, the experiment that changed the rules. The Nets already had Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving. In March they added Griffin, bought out by Detroit, and Aldridge, bought out by San Antonio. Two players with 13 All-Star selections between them joined a title favorite for minimum money. Aldridge played five games before stepping away. Griffin was useful through the playoffs. And the Nets lost in the second round anyway, in overtime of a seventh game, with two of their three stars hurt.

That result is the honest summary of the market. A bought-out veteran is available for a reason, and the reason is usually age or a game that no longer earns his salary. Most of them play limited minutes in the regular season and fewer in a best-of-seven series, where rotations shrink to eight players. The successes are remembered because they are few.

The competitive-balance complaint, and what was proposed

The objection is easy to state. A team in a small market pays most of a veteran's salary. A team in a big market, already loaded, gets the player for the minimum. The seller receives no draft pick and no prospect, and the standings tilt a little further toward the clubs that were already ahead.

It grew loudest in 2021. Brooklyn's two signings came in the same month the Lakers picked up Andre Drummond after his release by Cleveland, and the complaint heard around the league was that the buyout market had turned into a free second trade deadline for a few glamour destinations.

Several fixes were floated in league circles and in the press over the next two years. One would have sent bought-out players through an ordered process, giving teams lower in the standings the first right to sign them. Another would have used sealed bids. A third would simply have moved the eligibility date earlier, to the trade deadline itself, so that a player could not be freed for a playoff run after the last day on which his team could have been compensated for him.

None of those was adopted. The 2023 agreement chose the apron test instead, which attacks the same problem from the side of the buyer and leaves the player's right to choose his team intact for everyone below the line.

The union's side of the argument deserves stating, because it is a fair one. A bought-out player has given up salary he was contractually owed in order to gain a freedom every other free agent has. Routing him to a team he did not pick, on a contract worth a small part of his old one, would take away the thing he paid for. And the record does not show buyout signings deciding championships with any regularity.

The judgment here is that the complaint was always more about appearance than results. The 2021 Nets looked like a league out of balance and then lost. But appearances matter to a league that sells the idea of 30 teams with a chance, and the apron rule was a proportionate answer: it stopped the most lopsided signings without building a new draft for 35-year-olds.

How the NBA version compares with NHL buyouts and NFL post-deadline waivers

Three leagues use the word, or the wire, and mean different things by it.

In the NHL a buyout is a right the team holds and can use without the player's consent. It is available in a short window after the Stanley Cup Final. The club pays a fixed share of the remaining salary, two-thirds for most players and one-third for those under 26, spread over twice the remaining length of the contract, and the player becomes a free agent. Nothing is negotiated. The formula is in the hockey agreement and the cap charge follows from it. It is a summer tool for escaping a bad contract and has no connection to stocking a contender in March. The in-season movement of hockey players runs through a different system altogether, described in our guide to NHL waivers.

The NFL barely needs a buyout, because most football contracts are not guaranteed to begin with. A team that wants to move on from a veteran cuts him and owes only whatever guarantees remain. What the NFL does have is a waiver wrinkle tied to its trade deadline. For most of the year a veteran with four or more accrued seasons who is cut becomes a free agent at once and can sign anywhere. After the trade deadline that changes: every player who is cut, veterans included, goes on waivers and can be claimed in reverse order of record. The rule exists to stop the very thing the NBA market allows, a veteran let go by a losing team and choosing a contender in November. The offseason side of football player movement is in our guide to how NFL free agency works.

League	What "buyout" or late-season release means	Who decides	Where the player lands
NBA	A negotiated reduction in guaranteed salary, followed by waivers	Team and player together	If he clears, any team permitted to sign him
NHL	A formula payout of one-third or two-thirds of remaining salary, in an offseason window	The team alone	Free agency that summer
NFL	No buyout as such; after the trade deadline all cut players pass through waivers	The team alone	The worst-ranked team that claims him
MLB	A released player passes through release waivers; his old club pays the balance if he clears	The team alone	Any club, for a prorated minimum

Basketball's version is the only one of the four that is a negotiation, and the only one in which the player routinely ends up better off. That follows from the contracts. NBA deals are guaranteed almost without exception, so a team cannot simply stop paying, and a player with guaranteed money has something to trade for his exit.

The same root explains the other odd transactions in the league's rulebook. A sign-and-trade exists because a team over the cap cannot just sign the free agent it wants. A buyout exists because a team cannot just cut the veteran it no longer needs. Both were narrowed in 2023 by the same apron. More of our coverage of the league's rules and structure is collected on the basketball hub.