Sign and Release Players
Outside Dynasty Mode[edit]
Players can be freely signed and released outside Dynasty Mode with the only restriction being the fifteen player limit. Players released into the Free Agent Pool before starting a new Dynasty game will not count against their former team's cap while players added to a roster will automatically be included in the team's payroll. As with trades, the salary cap itself is also ignored when signing players outside Dynasty Mode and players will never refuse to sign with a team. The ability to quickly and easily move players between teams using the Sign/Release menu makes it an essential function for roster patching, particularly as recent games do not allow users to trade players for an empty roster slot.
Within Dynasty Mode[edit]
Users face further restrictions when signing and releasing players within Dynasty Mode. In addition to the fifteen player limit, the salary cap is the most obvious restriction as users must conform to the salary cap rules when offering players contracts and as in real life, players released before their contract expires still count towards a team's payroll. In NBA Live, they are represented as "Waived Salaries" on the Release Player screen. Players may also decline contract offers and if constantly lowballed in negotiations, will automatically refuse any further offers. Beginning with NBA Live 08 on the Xbox 360/Playstation 3, Dynasty Mode has featured a negotiation mini-game where a player's interest must be increased by emphasising certain attributes of the user's team (including championship potential, available playing time and cap space that can be spent on a contract) before a player will "listen" to a contract offer. This adds a further challenge/restriction to signing players.