The NBA’s transaction wire hasn’t been as busy since opening night as it was leading up to to the regular season, but we can still expect several moves to be completed in the coming days. The deadline for teams to exercise their 2027/28 team options on rookie scale contracts arrives on Monday (November 2), and a number of those decisions have yet to be reported or announced.
Unlike player or team options on veteran contracts, third- and fourth-year options on rookie scale contracts for former first-round picks must be exercised a year in advance. For instance, when the Spurs picked up Stephon Castle’s fourth-year option earlier this month, they were locking in his salary for the 2027/28 season — his ’26/27 salary became guaranteed last October when the team exercised his third-year option.
As our tracker shows, 35 options have been picked up so far, but a number of teams still have decisions to make on players who were first-round picks in 2024 and 2025. Some of those remaining option decisions are no-brainers — the Hornets haven’t yet exercised Kon Knueppel’s $11,017,560 option for 2027/28, for instance, but there’s no doubt they’ll do so.
Other decisions are less cut-and-dried. For example, the Hornets must also decide whether they want to pick up Tidjane Salaun’s $10,445,632 fourth-year option for 2027/28. Charlotte has a pretty favorable cap situation for next season and can certainly afford to make that commitment to the former sixth overall pick, but his role through two-plus years in the NBA has been pretty limited, so there’s no guarantee the team will do so.
Here’s the list of the 17 option decisions that have yet to be officially finalized:
