2025 Free Agency Day 1 open thread

League news will be announced starting Sunday 3pm Pacific

The index for all DNHQ Free Agency Coverage is here.

Where can I educate myself on various free agents that GSW should pursue?

Check out

• Free agency key dates plus Transcript: Perks and Apricot on GSW Free Agency (part 1)

What are the key dates in the 2024 NBA Free Agency season?

The Free Agency Moratorium starts June 30. This is supposed to be quiet time but in fact all the free agent signings get announced then.

• NBA glossary and primer on free agency

• Perks Warriors Cap and Salary Doc

• Day After Last Game of NBA Finals: Each NBA team may begin negotiating with upcoming free agents who finished the just-completed season on its roster.

• June 30: Each NBA team may begin negotiating with all other upcoming free agents (beginning at 6 p.m. ET).

• July 6: Each NBA team may begin signing free agents to contracts (12:01 p.m. ET).

I always found this calendar to be extremely unhelpful, so let me give you context for how slowly or quickly we might hear by listing the titles of the DNHQ articles from last year. Keep in mind that this year could be different. Things may be unusually slow for GSW because if GSW and Kuminga may be slow to come to agreement and that could stop GSW from signing free agents.

When will we hear news?

Free agency signings will be announced starting Day 1 of the Moratorium period.

For context…

In 2024:

• Day 1. We learned: GSW was exploring sign-and-trades for Klay, Chris Paul waived; Paul George was pursued but joins PHI

• Day 2. Klay sign-and-trade with DAL confirmed; De’Anthony Melton signs

• Day 3. Lauri Markkanen and Buddy Hield targeted; Kyle Anderson signed

• Day 5. Buddy Hield signed. Klay sign-and-trade expanded. Markkanen still targeted.

In 2023:

• Early on Day 1, Draymond’s re-signing news broke.

• Around Day 3, Cory Joseph’s signing news broke.

• Around Day 8, Dario Saric’s signing news broke.

In 2021:

• Within the first few hours of Day 1, half the Warriors’ free agent targets had already been signed by the Lakers. (Excuse me while I smile and smile about this from the comfort of post 2022 Championship.)

• Otto Porter Jr’s signing news came at 9pm of Day 1 (Aug 2 2021)

• Nemanja Bjelica’s signing news came around 9:30am of Day 2

• Andre Iguodala signing news came Aug 6, after the moratorium.

In THEORY and by rule, the key dates are :

• Official start of league year and free agency moratorium when no agreements can be made. Teams can NOT start negotiating with players before. The moratorium gives all teams a chance to meet with any free agent, so it’s not a race.  

• Free agency moratorium ends. Teams officially can begin signing players and complete trades.

In reality, free agency negotiations are happening at all times, through intermediaries. The league turned a blind eye to this because of the difficulty of enforcement, but teams flouted the rules to ridiculous extents. Regularly, reports would come out on free agency agreements in the first minutes of the moratorium. The league finally had to crack down on MIL for announcing a sign-and-trade within minutes, and MIA and CHI for a complex three person sign-and-trade.

The practical result of this is to expect most free agency signings to be announced starting Day 1 of the moratorium.

These moratorium agreements are not binding of course, but it’s major news if someone backs out of the agreement (for instance the absurdly funny DeAndre Jordan situation in 2015, still my favorite NBA Twitter real-time saga).