After a 128-day offseason, NBA opening day is here! The 2026/27 regular season will tip off on Tuesday, and rather than having to wait until the evening for the action to get underway, we’ve got an afternoon contest on tap. In the first game of an opening-day triple-header, the Pistons and Celtics will square off at 2:00 pm Central time in Detroit.
That high-level appetizer will be followed by matchups between the two presumed favorites in each conference, as the Sixers visit the defending champion Knicks at 6:00 pm CT, while the Spurs host the Thunder at 8:30 pm CT.
All 30 NBA teams submitted their regular season rosters on Monday, and as our tracker shows, there are currently 519 players under contract for 540 spots. Of those players, 433 are on standard contracts, leaving a total of 17 openings on 15-man rosters around the league, while 86 are on two-way deals. Four teams – the Mavericks, Timberwolves, Kings, and Raptors – still have a two-way slot available.
Of the 433 players on standard contracts, 25 have non-guaranteed or partially guaranteed salaries for the 2026/27 season. That group would have had a 26th member, but Ben Simmons’ Achilles tear ensures that the Kings guard/forward will receive his full minimum salary, since Sacramento is responsible for paying him until he gets healthy.
As our list of early salary guarantee dates shows, several of the players without guaranteed salaries will earn partial or full guarantees if they’re not waived this week. Heat center Nick Richards, Grizzlies wing Jaylen Wells, and Trail Blazers guard Vit Krejci will have their salaries become fully guaranteed within the next few days, assuming they hang onto their roster spots and don’t agree to push back their guarantee dates.
Most of the other players on non-guaranteed deals won’t lock in full salaries until the league-wide guarantee date in January. That group includes the three veterans on Exhibit 9 contracts who earned spots on regular season rosters — Jazz center Tony Bradley, Knicks center James Wiseman, and Wizards forward Anthony Gill will all have their Exhibit 9 deals converted to standard non-guaranteed minimum-salary contracts, so their teams will no longer be protected in the event of an in-season injury like they would have been during the preseason.
As Keith Smith of Spotrac details, just one team – the Nuggets – will begin the season over the second tax apron, though six more are operating above the first apron. Another six are currently in luxury tax territory, while the remaining 17 are below the tax line. Of those 17 non-tax teams, 16 are over the cap, while the Nets are the lone team with cap room remaining — they have roughly $4.9MM in wiggle room below the cap.
Finally, it’s worth noting that while a player who signs a minimum-salary contract on Tuesday would still receive a full-season salary, someone who signs for the minimum on Wednesday or later would be on a prorated deal. Since the NBA regular season is 174 days long, a player who inks a minimum-salary contract on Friday, for example, would earn 171/174ths of his usual minimum salary, and his cap hit would reflect that.
Happy opening day!