Under the current NBA collective bargaining agreement, the mid-level non-taxpayer exception, room exception and biennial exception can be used to acquire players through waiver claims, giving teams new ways to take roster losses from other clubs whose salaries do not exceed the MLE (roughly $15 million in 2026/27).
(RELATED: 2026/27 mid-level values, biennial exceptions)
In the past, in order to claim a player off waivers, a team generally had to be able to fit a player’s entire salary into the cap, and traded player exceptionor a disabling disabled player.
Despite the new options available to teams looking for a recently waived player, waiver claims are still infrequent. After the end of the draft and the first part of the free agent period, many teams in the NBA are unable to acquire additional salary or do not have additional roster spots for rookies. Additionally, many of the players who end up getting waived are being cut because their current contracts aren’t considered great values.
With All of this is not a surprise that the players who most often demand waivers are those on minimum wage deals, as any club has the right to claim these players using minimum wage exemption.
Even minimum salary claims have some caveats – the minimum salary exception can only be used to sign players to contracts of up to two years, so the same rules apply to waiver claims. If a player has signed a three-year minimum wage contract, he cannot be claimed using the minimum wage exception, even if he is in the final year of the deal. And if a player earned more than the minimum salary in the previous season, he cannot be claimed using the minimum salary exception.
Essentially, the minimum salary exception can only be used to claim a player whose current contract could be signed using the minimum wage exemption.
Taking into account all the factors that reduce the chances of being claimed off waivers, it makes sense that almost all players who are released end up clearing waivers. While the league typically sees at least a few waiver claims in a given year, that total dropped to two in 2025/26, the lowest in a single season since 2010/11.
Despite how rare they are, we still want to keep track of all waiver claims that occur throughout the 2026/27 season, as you never know which claim could turn out to be decisive. One of the two claims last season, for example, were the Suns. grabbing Jordan Goodwin off waivers from the Lakers. Goodwin has become a reliable rotation player in Phoenix and signed a new three-year, $19 million contract with his new team as a free agent this offseason.
We’ll be tracking waiver claims this year at the location below, updating the list throughout the season to include the latest moves. Here is the current list:
- Trail Blazers claim Micah Potter by Pacers (July 10) (history)
- The Pacers, facing their first apron, decided to part ways with Potter to replace him with a veteran big man Larry Nance Jr The Trail Blazers have no shortage of big men on their roster Donovan Klingon, Robert Williams, Jan Hansenand Brendan Carlson everything is in the mix, but they decided to give the ex-Pacer a try, claiming his non-guaranteed minimum-salary contract was off waivers. Potter may not make Portland’s regular-season lineup given the team’s frontcourt impasse and lack of guaranteed money, but he’s coming off a pretty good season in which he averaged 9.7 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.5 assists on a stellar .515/.423/.842 shooting percentage in 19.3 minutes per game.
- Heat claim No Mbengo from Hornets (September 22) (history)
- When Mbeng signed with Charlotte to an Supplement 10 contract, it appeared the Hornets’ plans were to purchase his rights back to the G League and have him play for the Greensboro Swarm this fall. But apparently the Heat didn’t support that plan. Mbenga’s NBAGL rights are still controlled by the Sioux Falls Skyforce, Miami’s affiliate, and after claiming the guards off waivers, the Heat are now in a position to give him the $91,000 Annex 10 bonus the Hornets originally committed to. It is likely that Mbeng will be revoked and report back to Skyforce this fall.
