Golden State signs them quietly and waives them in public

Open the NBA's transaction log, filter it to Golden State, and read down. The last four entries are all subtractions.

September 16, waived Chance McMillian. September 16, waived Deivon Smith. September 18, waived Jacksen Moni. September 19, waived Elias Ralph.

Now scroll past them, looking for the part where the Warriors signed those four men. It is not there. The most recent Golden State signing the league publishes is Brandon Williams, on August 26, and the one before that is Georges Niang on August 25. By the public record, this is a team that has hired nobody in twenty-five days and spent the last four cutting people it never employed.

None of that is false. It is half a sentence.

Six in, four out, four days#

Golden State signed six players between Wednesday and Saturday. Every one of those signings was reported and not one of them was posted to the league's log.

McMillian and Smith went first, both to Exhibit 10 contracts on Wednesday, and both were waived before the day was over. Hoops Rumors had the waivers off the league log that evening and described both men as having signed "earlier on Wednesday." Brady Klopfer at Golden State of Mind reported the same shape of it: signed and waived, same day, both guards. Brett Siegel reported the pair being signed and then subsequently waived.

Moni lasted marginally longer. He signed Thursday and was waived Friday, per Hoops Rumors, citing RealGM's log for the signing and the league's for the cut.

Then Friday brought Nick Boyd and Elias Ralph on camp contracts, reported by Paul Garcia of The Spot Up Shot. Ralph was gone Saturday, waived to clear a spot for Obi Agbim, the former Baylor guard who signed that evening. Garcia had that one too.

So: six signed, four waived, and the men still standing are Boyd and Agbim. That last part is checkable without trusting anybody's reporting, because the club publishes its own roster. Golden State's roster page carried both Boyd and Agbim on Sunday morning. It carried no McMillian, no Smith, no Moni, no Ralph.

The cut is the paperwork working#

None of this is a club changing its mind four times in four days.

An Exhibit 10 is a one-year minimum contract with nothing guaranteed in it, and the thing that makes it worth signing is what happens after it ends. A player on one who gets waived, then reports to the club's G League affiliate and stays there at least sixty days, collects a bonus. Hoops Rumors puts the ceiling on that bonus at about $91,000 this season. (Figures in circulation for this bonus range from $50,000 to $91,200 depending on which season and which explainer you land on, which is why that number has a name attached to it here rather than being stated flatly.)

Read the sequence again with that in hand. Signing a man and waiving him the same afternoon is how he reaches the bonus, and nothing else gets him there, because the bonus does not exist until somebody has been signed and then let go. The Warriors were not deciding against McMillian on Wednesday. They were paying him.

Santa Cruz is the destination for most of this. Both McMillian and Smith played for the affiliate last season, and Moni played for it too.

Which brings the whole thing back to why the league's log reads the way it does. It publishes the waivers because a waiver is a roster transaction with consequences for every other team, and it does not publish these signings. Alex Toohey's Exhibit 10 of September 9 is not on it either, and that one the club's own site reports through Anthony Slater of ESPN. Neither is Dalen Terry's camp deal. Golden State is hiding nothing here. The log was built to record one kind of event, and the people reading it want a different kind.

Nine days#

The calendar is what makes this week look frantic rather than routine.

Golden State holds media day at Chase Center on September 28 and opens training camp at BYU-Hawaii the following morning, running through October 3, with the preseason opener against the Clippers in Honolulu on October 4. The club announced all of it on August 31.

That is nine days from Sunday. Every one of these contracts had to exist before the plane does, and every bonus attached to one of them had to be created while there was still a season to report to. A club that waits until October to sign and waive a G League player has missed the point of the exercise.

Boyd is the one worth watching out of the two survivors, because he is the one who has been pointed at this camp the longest. He reached a tentative Exhibit 10 with Golden State back in June after going undrafted, per Hoops Rumors, and the deal became official on Friday. He spent six college seasons across Florida Atlantic, San Diego State and Wisconsin, the extra eligibility coming from a redshirt year and the pandemic.

There is one more thing worth taking from the week, and it is the reason Ralph's four days happened the way they did. Hoops Rumors reported Golden State at the twenty-one man offseason roster limit going into Saturday, and reported that Ralph was waived specifically to make room for Agbim. Take that as read and the club has arrived at the point in its calendar where every addition costs somebody else his job.

It arrived there nine days before the plane leaves. Whether the log has more subtractions in it this week is the open question, and it is a short wait.

Called Shots#

Golden State waives at least one more player on or after September 20 and on or before September 29, 2026. The club has waived four men in the four days to Saturday, it was reported at the twenty-one man offseason limit going into the weekend, and camp opens on the 29th with a roster that has to be legal when it does. The case against is simple and real: a team that has spent a week clearing its paperwork may well have finished clearing it, the four cuts already made may be the whole of it, and nothing obliges the club to add anybody else before Hawaii rather than after. Scored off the NBA's public transaction log, Golden State filter: any Golden State waiver dated September 20 through September 29 inclusive is right, and none is wrong. A signing with no corresponding waiver does not count.

Sources#

NBA transaction log, Golden State Warriors filter, and the Golden State Warriors roster page, both read September 20, 2026. Warriors club release of August 31, 2026, for the training camp and preseason dates. Hoops Rumors (Eli Cohen, September 16; and September 18 and 19) for the signings, the same-day sequence and the Exhibit 10 terms. Brady Klopfer, Golden State of Mind, September 16. Brett Siegel, September 16. Paul Garcia, The Spot Up Shot, September 18 and 19.