Free agency is the period and system in which players whose contracts have expired may negotiate and sign with any team, subject to the salary cap rules.
Free agency is the league's annual transfer of power. A player whose contract ends becomes a free agent, unrestricted if free to sign anywhere, restricted if their current team holds the right to match any offer. The negotiating period opens each summer on a set date, and the first hours of it regularly commit more money in reported agreements than the rest of the offseason combined.
The system's history is labour history. Players won meaningful free agency through the Oscar Robertson lawsuit settlement of 1976, which dismantled the old reserve system in basketball, and later bargaining agreements added the salary cap, max contracts, and Bird rights around the freedom, building the modern rules every July runs on. Decision era free agencies, above all the summer of 2010, turned player movement into the sport's second season of coverage.
Free agency vocabulary is transaction vocabulary: offer sheets, player and team options, sign and trades, and the moratorium between agreement and signature. This glossary treats the term as the hub of the business category, since cap, tax, apron, and exception questions all describe tools that exist for one annual moment, when contracts end and rosters are remade.
In use"Free agency opened at midnight and the first signing was reported within minutes."