10-Day Contracts Valuable Concept for Teams

Ten-day contracts first appeared in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement in 1976, and teams have been using them ever since to varying success. The current CBA allows 10-day contracts to be signed beginning in January. Each player can re-sign a second 10-day contract with the same team; a contract for the remainder of the season must be issued if a team wants to retain the player beyond that.

So far, 29 10-day contracts have been signed this season, and seven were then signed to a second 10-day contract. Three players – Leandro Barbosa in Phoenix, Chris Johnson in Boston and Cartier Martin in Atlanta — have been signed for the remainder of the season after first signing on with a 10-day contract.

General managers have gone from playing chess to checkers, as one NBA source explained, because they now have to think several steps ahead even with short-term, non-guaranteed deals.

via Jodie Valade of The Cleveland Plain Dealer