Staying at st Heatlist by opening night, veterans center Nick Richards now has a fully guaranteed salary for the 2026/27 season, according to Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Richards will receive $3,066,143 under his minimum salary contract, while Miami has a cap hit of $2,449,421. The team now has 13 players with fully guaranteed contracts, with a wing Myron Gardner sure of a partial guarantee of at least $500,000 on his minimum deal. The 15th spot on the Heat’s roster is now open.
The Heat signed Richards this offseason to provide frontcourt depth behind the Stars Bam Adebayo and Janice Antecumba. The 28-year-old, who spent his first six NBA seasons in Charlotte, Phoenix and Chicago, averaged 5.8 points and 5.1 rebounds in 14.6 minutes a night over 48 games with the Suns and Bulls last season.
Richards is one of several players whose contract was fully or partially guaranteed, provided it was not canceled on or before the opening day of the 2026/27 regular season. How our tracker shows the other players in this boat are:
- Mo Bamba (Jazz): Partial guarantee ($250,000) increases to $500,000.
- Isaiah Crawford (Rockets): Non-guaranteed salary ($2,449,421) becomes partially guaranteed ($1,154,325).
- Jaylen Wells (Grizzlies): A partial guarantee ($300,000) increases to a full guarantee ($2,296,271).
- Brandon Williams (Warriors): Non-guaranteed salary ($2,625,627) becomes partially guaranteed ($1,400,000).
In addition, Trail Blazers security guard Vit Krejci his partial guarantee of $250,000 will increase to a full guarantee of $2,667,944 and Pelicans forward Trendon Watford his partial bond will be increased from $250,000 to $500,000 if they are not released Wednesday.
At this point, we assume all six of those players — along with Richards — will receive those guarantees.
If it is known that one or more of them have agreed to postpone their respective warranty dates, we will share those updates as soon as possible. But in most cases, if a team had no intention of locking in that guaranteed money, it would waive a player during the regular-season roster building process before Monday’s deadline, as Dallas did with Dwight Powell — his partial guarantee would increase from $1 million to $1.5 million if he remained under contract until Tuesday.