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What counts as a year of service in the NBA, and how is the minimum salary prorated mid-season?

By McKinley Malbrough III, J.D., MS-HRM · Certified WNBA player agent · Former certified NBA agent

Published October 29, 2026. Last updated October 29, 2026.

The minimum scale itself is laid out in the NBA minimum salary guide. This article covers the two rules that decide which line of that scale a player lands on and what he is paid when he signs after opening night. Both come from the NBA collective bargaining agreement. The glossary covers years of service, the minimum salary, the 10-day contract and the two-way contract.

What counts as a year of service in the NBA?

A player is credited with one year for each year he is on an NBA Active List or Inactive List for one or more days during the Regular Season, per the CBA (Article I, Section 1(iiii)). One day is enough. A player cannot earn more than one year for any one season, per the same section.

The CBA defines the Regular Season as the regularly scheduled games between NBA teams, which leaves out exhibition games, the Play-In and the playoffs. The Active List is the list of signed players who can play in a Regular Season game, and the Inactive List holds signed players who cannot, per Article I. Years of service are what the minimum scale reads when it asks how much experience a player has.

When does a season not count as a year of service?

Three situations are written out in the definition, per the CBA (Article I, Section 1(iiii)), and a fourth follows from it:

• A player who withholds playing services under a contract for more than 30 days after the season begins gets no credit for that year.
• A restricted free agent whose team extended his qualifying offer deadline to March 1 and who has not signed any contract by then gets no credit.
• Time on a roster under a contract the Commissioner disapproves gets no credit.
• Preseason and training camp days do not count either, because the definition looks only at days during the Regular Season.

The credit is also not instant. A year is credited at the end of the Salary Cap Year that contains the season, and a Salary Cap Year runs from July 1 through June 30, per the CBA. A player who debuts in January therefore carries zero years of service until that June 30. The definition also states that it cannot be used to measure pension or benefit service, which are set under Article IV.

Do two-way, 10-day and G League stints count?

Yes, if the player spends at least one day on an NBA team's Active List or Inactive List in the regular season. The definition has no minimum number of games or days beyond one, and it does not exclude contract types.

The two-way row follows from two provisions read together. A two-way player sits on the Active or Inactive List while he provides services to the NBA team and on the Two-Way List at all other times, per the CBA (Article XXIX, Section 3(a)). The CBA itself treats two-way players as accruing service: it bars a team from signing or converting a player who has or may have four or more years of service at any point in the contract to a two-way deal, with one narrow one-season exception, per Article II, Section 11(e)(ii).

A player an NBA team assigns to its G League affiliate is placed on the NBA team's Inactive List, per the CBA (Article XLI, Section 1(a)). That keeps the assigned player on the NBA lists. A two-way player's time with the affiliate is Two-Way List time, which is why one day with the NBA club matters. The contract rules are in the two-way contract guide and the 10-day and hardship guide.

How does a year of service move a player up the minimum scale?

Each credited year moves the player one line further along the scale, up to the 10-plus line, and the first step is the biggest. The 2026-27 minimum is $1,357,763 at zero years and $2,185,116 at one year, a jump of $827,353, per Hoops Rumors. A rookie who spends one day on an Inactive List in his first season moves to the one-year line the next summer.

Because credit arrives on June 30, a player is measured by the seasons already credited when the contract is signed, not by the season in progress. That is an inference from the credit-timing sentence and not a quoted rule, and Hoops Rumors describes a zero-year player as one who has not yet made his debut, a looser test than the CBA's list-days definition. The scale year is fixed separately: it is the Salary Cap Year of the first season the contract covers, per the CBA (Article II, Section 6(a)).

Years of service also open and close other doors. A player with three or more years who signs a one-year, 10-Day or Rest-of-Season minimum contract has the pay above the two-year minimum reimbursed to the team from a league-wide fund, per the CBA (Article IV, Section 6(h)). A player with four or more years generally cannot sign a two-way deal, per Article II, Section 11(e).

How is the minimum salary prorated when a team signs a player mid-season?

The minimum is the annual figure for the player's line multiplied by the days remaining in the Regular Season over the total days, per the CBA (Article I, Section 1(kk)). The numerator counts the days remaining as of the date the contract is entered into. A contract that covers the whole Regular Season gets the full annual figure.

The 2026-27 Regular Season opens on October 20, 2026 and ends on April 11, 2027, per the NBA. Counting both dates, that is 174 days. The table shows what that produces, using the scale lines from Hoops Rumors.

The January 5 row shows a range because the minimum-salary definition says days remaining "as of the date" the contract is entered into and does not say whether that day is counted. The two-way definition does say so, and counts the signing day, per the CBA (Article II, Section 11(a)(ii)). The two readings differ by one day in 174, or about 0.6 percent.

Which contracts use the prorated minimum?

Three do. A 10-day contract pays the Minimum Player Salary, prorated by the days the contract covers, per the CBA (Article II, Section 9(b) and Article I, Section 1(kk)). A hardship contract is a 10-day contract no matter when it is signed, per Section 9(e). A rest-of-season contract may not pay less than the Minimum Player Salary, per Section 10(b).

A two-way contract is outside this formula. Its salary is 50 percent of the zero-year minimum for every player, whatever his years of service, prorated by the days left in the season, per Article II, Section 11(a)(ii). A team over the cap can still use the minimum salary exception for the minimum deals, and the types of NBA contracts shows where each fits.

What decides the pay on a mid-season deal?

Three facts decide a mid-season deal: the years of service on the league's records, the date the contract is entered into, and the contract type. The first picks the line of the scale, the second sets the fraction of the season, and the third decides whether the minimum formula applies at all.

Agents notice that service-time disputes are rare, but a miscounted year is expensive because it moves a player a full line of the scale.

A player who signs more than one short contract can line up the next one early: the CBA lets a team and a 10-day player agree to a rest-of-season contract that starts the day after the 10-day term expires, per Article II, Section 9(h). How teams fill the final roster spots is in the NBA salary cap guide.