The NBA and the National Basketball Association reached an agreement Sunday night regarding rules that allow extra player substitutions for teams that deal with players who enter the league’s health and safety protocols, according to a memo obtained by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

The revised rules, which are spelled out in the memo, went into effect Sunday night and will remain in place until January 19 – at which time the league will give teams more guidance on how things proceed from there.

Under the agreement, teams will be allowed to sign a replacement player for each positive COVID-19 case that appears across their roster. So, if a team has five positive cases of COVID-19, for example, it can sign five replacement players.

Meanwhile, teams will have to sign at least one replacement player if they have two positive cases of COVID-19; at least two if they have had three positive cases of COVID-19; And at least three if they have four or more positive cases of COVID-19.

The memo also states that any time a team is required to sign a player, that player must be available by the start of the team’s first game after a replacement player signing allowance has been granted by the NBA.

Any signed replacement players will also not count towards the team’s annual salary and will not add to potential luxury tax payments. That’s a huge difference to a team like the Brooklyn Nets, who are among the teams currently dealing with a major outbreak of COVID-19 and Sunday’s game against the Denver Nuggets, as well as Tuesday’s game against the Washington Wizards, have been postponed. According to ESPN’s Bobby Marks, each replacement player the Nets need to sign, if counted toward luxury tax, would cost them nearly $500,000.

As part of the agreement, the NBA and NBPA have also agreed to eliminate the maximum number of games a two-way player is allowed to be on a team’s active roster. Under an earlier agreement the two sides came to this summer, there was a 50-match limit. Now, that limit no longer exists, as players get paid an adjusted wage if they end up being active for more than 50 games this season.

The National Basketball Association postponed five games on Sunday – three games that were scheduled to be played on Sunday (New Orleans Pelicans-Philadelphia 76ers, Cleveland Cavaliers-Atlanta Hawks, Nuggets-Nets) plus the Orlando Magic-Toronto Raptors game on Monday, Wizards Nets Tuesday. The match – As a result of the sudden rise in positive COVID-19 cases that swept the league over the past week.

Dozens of players went into health and safety protocols last week, including stars like Brooklyn FC Kevin DurantAnd James Harden And Keri IrvingMilwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antikonmo And the guard hawks Bring youngSo does Los Angeles Lakers coach Frank Vogel.

The first major outbreak of the season, the Chicago Bulls, returned to play Sunday night for the first time since Tuesday’s games against the Detroit Pistons and were postponed Thursday against the Raptors — the first postponements by the NBA this season. The Bulls beat the Lakers 115-110 in Chicago.

With positive cases mounting across the league, teams scrambled to fill their rosters with replacement players to stay above the minimum eight active players needed to play an NBA game. On Saturday night, Nets and Magic played a game in which the two teams lost 24 players either due to injury or due to health and safety protocols, and only 17 players were available between them.

Several teams are hovering around the eight-man mark at the moment in addition to those that required Sunday postponements.