RealGM

Blazers have been granted a 16th roster spot.

http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindblazer ... a_har.html
If the Blazers exercise the exception, they would sign a player to a non-guaranteed contract and he would be eligible to remain with the team until one of their four most-recent injured players returns. Essentially, the Blazers would keep any player they sign until Rudy Fernandez (back) or Nicolas Batum (shoulder) returns.

Fernandez, who is expected to miss four-to-six weeks after undergoing a microdiscectomy procedure last week, would most likely return soonest.

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So since all contracts are guaranteed after Jan 10th, and likely none of those players will be back before that, are they forced to both waive him and pay him?

Don't worry, league minimum for Paul Allen worth less than 100$ for you

But don't teams generally sign guys to 10 day contracts in these situations? Oh, that is only allowed after Jan 5.

But I presume they would sign their temp guy, and then between Jan 5th and Jan 10th, waive him and then re-sign him to a 10 day contract.

Chakdaddy is essentially right. I spoke with a friend who had front office experience and he pointed out that any non-guaranteed contract becomes guaranteed on January 10, regardless of whether a team uses a hardship exception in order sign a player to one. So he would use the hardship exception to sign a player to a NG contract, waive him before the contract became guaranteed and then re-sign the player to 10-day contracts until the first injured player returns.

And since the hardship exception remains in place until the first injured player returns, the team could waive their initial replacement player and sign another one if they wanted.

Now they plan to ask for a 17th roster spot after Joel misses the required 3 games.