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Saturday, October 3, 2026 at 5:20 PM ET

NBA Free Agency Explained: Bird Rights, Max Deals and the Aprons

How NBA free agency works: the opening-night negotiating window, restricted free agency, Bird rights, max contracts, the luxury tax and sign-and-trades.

Updated 2026-10-03.

In this guide
  1. When free agency starts
  2. Unrestricted vs. restricted free agents
  3. Bird rights
  4. Max contracts
  5. The salary cap, luxury tax and aprons
  6. Sign-and-trades
  7. How news breaks on opening night
  8. Related reading

NBA free agency is one of the busiest news nights on the sports calendar. Within minutes of the window opening, dozens of deals can be reported, many worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The rules behind those deals are complicated, but the core ideas are easy to follow once you know the vocabulary.

When free agency starts

Free agency begins shortly after the NBA Draft, at the end of June. Teams are allowed to start negotiating with free agents from other teams at a set time, in the evening Eastern time, and that moment is when the flood of reports begins.

What follows is the moratorium. During this period, which runs into early July, teams and players can negotiate and agree to terms, but most contracts cannot be officially signed yet. The league uses this time to finalize the salary cap and other figures for the new season. That is why you see reports that a player “has agreed to” a deal in late June or early July but no official announcement from the team until days later.

Unrestricted vs. restricted free agents

  • Unrestricted free agents (UFAs) can sign with any team. Their old team has no right to match.
  • Restricted free agents (RFAs) are usually players coming off their rookie-scale contracts. Their team can make them restricted by extending a qualifying offer, a one-year contract offer set by the collective bargaining agreement.

A restricted free agent can sign an offer sheet with another team. His current team then has a short window to match the terms. If it matches, the player stays. If it does not, he goes to the new team. RFAs sometimes sit unsigned well into the summer while the market sets a price.

A player can also accept the qualifying offer, play one season on it and become an unrestricted free agent the following summer.

Bird rights

The NBA uses a soft salary cap, which means teams can go over the cap in certain situations. The most important one is Bird rights, named after Larry Bird.

Bird rights let a team exceed the cap to re-sign its own free agent. There are three levels, based roughly on how long the player has been with the team:

  • Full Bird rights: the player has been with the team for three seasons without being waived or changing teams as a free agent. The team can re-sign him up to the maximum salary, regardless of cap space.
  • Early Bird rights: two seasons. The team can offer a raise, but less than with full Bird rights.
  • Non-Bird rights: one season. The team can offer a smaller raise over his prior salary.

Bird rights generally stay with a player when he is traded, which is one reason teams acquire players with expiring contracts.

Max contracts

A max contract is the most a player is allowed to earn under the league’s rules. It is not a fixed dollar figure. Instead, it is a percentage of the salary cap, and that percentage goes up with the player’s years of experience. The newest players have the lowest max, veterans with several years of service have a higher one, and long-tenured veterans can earn the most.

There is also a larger version, often called the supermax (officially a designated veteran extension), available to players who meet certain criteria, such as earning All-NBA or MVP honors, while staying with the team that drafted them or acquired them early in their career.

Teams re-signing their own players can generally offer more years and larger annual raises than other teams can. That gives the incumbent team a built-in advantage.

The salary cap, luxury tax and aprons

NBA payroll rules have several levels, each set each year based on league revenue:

  • Salary cap: the baseline. Teams under it can sign free agents outright using cap space.
  • Luxury tax line: teams whose payroll ends the season above this line pay a tax that grows the further over they are. Repeat taxpayers pay more.
  • First apron: a level above the tax line. Teams above it lose access to some tools, such as certain exceptions and the ability to take back more salary than they send out in trades.
  • Second apron: a higher level with tougher restrictions, which can include limits on combining salaries in trades and on trading future draft picks.

Teams over the cap still have ways to add players, mainly the mid-level exception and minimum contracts. The size of the mid-level exception available depends on where a team’s payroll sits relative to the tax and aprons.

This is why you hear so much about teams trying to “get under the apron” or “duck the tax.”

Sign-and-trades

A sign-and-trade lets a free agent sign a new contract with his old team and then be traded immediately to the team he wants to join. It is useful when the player’s preferred team does not have cap space, and the old team gets something back instead of losing him for nothing.

Sign-and-trades come with restrictions. The contract must meet certain length requirements, and the team receiving the player becomes hard-capped at the first apron for the rest of the season, meaning it cannot go over that line for any reason.

How news breaks on opening night

Opening night of NBA free agency is a nonstop stream of reports. Here is what to expect:

  • Deals agreed in the first minutes. Many agreements are reached very quickly after the window opens, and national insiders often report them within seconds.
  • Terms in the first post. Reports usually include years and total value, such as “a four-year deal,” plus details like player options.
  • Agents as sources. Agents frequently share news through trusted reporters to announce a deal on their terms.
  • Official signings later. Teams announce once the moratorium ends and the paperwork is done.

Not every report is final. Deals agreed during the moratorium occasionally fall apart, and contract details can shift as cap figures become official. As always, look for a second insider and wait for the team’s announcement for the final terms.

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