The Disappearing 15th Man: How the CBA Quietly Rebuilt NBA Rosters

The NBA’s 2023 Collective Bargaining Agreement has quietly transformed the economics of roster construction, particularly for teams operating above the second apron. What once functioned as a soft cap system with workable mechanisms for adding depth has hardened into a landscape defined by austerity, where every marginal contract, every roster spot, and every day on the payroll carries strategic weight.

 

In this new environment, teams are fundamentally reengineering how they construct the back end of their rosters. Utilizing a suite of flexibility preserving tools—two‑way players, 10‑day contracts, and the deliberate decision to carry only 13 or 14 players—teams can minimize tax exposure and maximize optionality under the second apron’s punitive restrictions. The result is a labor market in which older veterans, whose minimum contracts now carry disproportionate cap and tax consequences, may be phased out by younger, cheaper players who carry more flexible contracts.

 

The second apron is the central driver of this shift. Teams above the apron lose access to nearly every mechanism for adding or rearranging salary: they cannot aggregate contracts in trades, cannot take back more money than they send out, cannot use the taxpayer mid‑level exception, and cannot rely on cash to facilitate deals.[i] These restrictions mean that even a veteran minimum contract, once considered a low risk, low cost way to add experience, now constrains a team’s future optionality.

 

The result is a structural shift in roster economics. The expansion to three two‑way slots has created a built‑in depth buffer that allows teams to functionally replace the traditional 14th and 15th men without incurring cap or tax consequences. The 14-day roster minimum rule and the strategic use of 10‑day contracts give teams the ability to meet league requirements while avoiding the long‑term rigidity of standard deals. In effect, the league has created a system where the default back end roster construction is now 14 standard contracts and three two‑ways. The 15th spot has become a luxury few apron teams can justify, and the veteran minimum class may be collateral damage.

 

NBA rules require teams to carry at least 14 players on standard contracts, but only most of the time.[ii] Teams are allowed to dip to 13 players for up to 14 consecutive days, and they can do this twice per season, for a total of 28 days.[iii] This loophole has become a powerful tool for tax paying teams. Because luxury tax is calculated based on a team’s roster on the final day of the regular season, teams can save hundreds of thousands of dollars by spending the maximum number of days at 13 players. The Boston Celtics recently demonstrated the extreme version of this strategy: they left a roster spot open until they hit the 28‑day limit, then signed Charles Bassey to a 10‑day contract on March 25, 2026, just long enough to comply with the rule without committing to a full season salary.[iv] Such tactics are now standard operating procedures for teams navigating the tax or trying to avoid repeater status.

 

The league’s expansion to three two‑way contracts marks another attractive salary-cap-saving move. Two‑way contracts offer everything the second apron punishes teams for lacking: cost control, waiver flexibility, and minimal cap implications. A two‑way player can be converted, waived, or cycled without triggering the cascading penalties that accompany standard contracts for apron teams. Two‑way players now function as a built‑in depth buffer, allowing teams to maintain practice bodies, emergency rotation options, and developmental prospects without committing to the rigidity of a standard contract. A team can call up a two‑way player for up to 50 games, plug short‑term holes, and then return him to the G League without ever touching the standard roster. Because two‑ways carry no cap hit, no tax hit, and no long‑term obligation, they represent a more lucrative option (over a veteran minimum contract) to a front office operating in a rigid system.

 

Another roster-building tool, the 10‑day contract, offers a cost‑efficient way to meet roster requirements without taking on long‑term salary.[v] With only a fraction of the cap hit of a full season minimum contract, a 10-day deal is a cost-efficient way to meet roster requirements without taking on long‑term salary. Teams like to use a “revolving door” of 10‑day players to fill the 14th spot. This allows them to evaluate fringe talent while avoiding commitment to a full‑season minimum deal. This strategic roster manipulation minimizes tax exposure while maintaining roster compliance and bench depth throughout the grueling 82-game regular season. For teams flirting with the repeater tax, these micro savings are part of a broader, multiyear tax avoidance strategy.

 

When you combine the 14‑day roster minimum loophole, the expansion to three two‑ways, the economics of 10‑day contracts, and the punitive nature of the second apron, you get a system in which teams can maintain depth without ever signing a veteran minimum player. In previous eras, the back end of the roster was populated by experienced players who provided stability, leadership, and situational utility. However, now operating under a new CBA, veterans have become the casualties of a system that rewards flexibility and punishes certainty.

 

Milwaukee’s recent decision to waive Cam Thomas and immediately convert Pete Nance from a two‑way contract to a multiyear minimum deal illustrates this tax avoidance strategy.[vi] Thomas’s contract, despite its modest size, represented a kind of dead‑end asset. As a standard minimum player, he could not be aggregated in a trade, could not be used to take back additional salary, and could not be replaced with a more expensive player if Milwaukee needed to pivot. His deal offered no multiyear control, no cost certainty, and no flexibility. And for a second apron team under the CBA’s punitive tax multipliers, those structural limitations became economically untenable.

 

Nance, by contrast, embodies the kind of asset profile that second apron teams are now structurally incentivized to pursue. A young player on a multiyear minimum deal provides cost control across multiple seasons, can be waived with minimal dead money, and can be traded one‑for‑one without triggering the apron’s punitive restrictions. His contract is cheaper than a veteran minimum and carries a lower effective tax burden, which matters enormously for teams when punitive tax multipliers can compound marginal salary differences into major tax hits that far exceed the underlying salary.

 

For Milwaukee, the choice was not between Thomas and Nance as basketball players. It was between a rigid contract and a flexible one, between a short‑term depth piece and a long‑term planning tool. The Bucks’ cap situation made the decision straightforward. Under the new CBA, flexibility is a survival strategy. And in that world, the Thomas–Nance sequence is not an anomaly but a preview of how second‑apron teams will increasingly be forced to operate.

 

The back end of the roster has become a center for cost control, rather than a place for experience, and the veteran minimum class has become the first casualty of the NBA’s new economic order. The Bucks’ handling of Cam Thomas and Pete Nance is not an isolated quirk of roster management; it is a window into the structural incentives the new CBA has created. The combined effect of two‑way expansion and the second apron has reshaped the back end of NBA rosters into a space where flexibility is king and veteran players are increasingly viewed as structural inefficiencies rather than stabilizing forces.

 

As teams continue to navigate this landscape, the league must grapple with whether it is comfortable with a labor structure that increasingly treats seasoned players as an encumbrance rather than an asset. If the NBA values the leadership, stability, and institutional knowledge that veterans bring, the next round of bargaining will need to reckon with the unintended consequences of a system that has made their contracts harder to justify and their jobs easier to eliminate.

 

[i] Singh, S. (2025, June 25). Explaining the second apron, a key financial rule in the NBA’s CBA. NBC Bay Area. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/nba/second-apron-nba-cba-explained/3900547/#:~:text=What%20are%20the%20second%20apron,teams%20in%20good%20standing%20get.

 

[ii] Adams, L. (2023, August 1). Hoops Rumors Glossary: NBA roster limits. Hoops Rumors. https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2023/08/hoops-rumors-glossary-nba-roster-limits-2.html#:~:text=A%20team%20qualifies%20for%20a,players%20for%20a%20limited%20period.

 

[iii] Spotrac. (2024, October 16). The NBA’s vanishing 15th roster spot | SPOTRAC News. spotrac.com. https://www.spotrac.com/news/_/id/2487/the-nbas-vanishing-15th-roster-spot#:~:text=With%20opening%20night%20approaching%2C%20if,teams%20have%20gotten%20increasingly%20creative.

 

[iv] ClutchPoints, J. O. (2026, March 25). Celtics center earns second 10-day contract amid roster minimum requirement. Yahoo Sports. https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/celtics-center-earns-second-10-172008822.html

 

[v] Kent, A. (2020, January 5).  CBA Explained: 10-Day Contracts. SLAM. https://slamonline.com/nba/cba-explained-10-day-contracts/#:~:text=January%205%2C%202020%7CAustin%20Kent,entirety%20on%20the%20team’s%20payroll.

 

[vi] Fayaz, V. (2026, March 24). Bucks convert Pete Nance to standard deal, waive Cam Thomas. Yahoo Sports. https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/bucks-convert-pete-nance-standard-015627058.html