How two-way contracts have changed NBA roster building and produced some of the league's best role players

Alex Caruso, Austin Reaves, Jose Alvarado, Duncan Robinson and Lu Dort are some of the NBA's biggest two-way success stories

Jasmyn Wimbish

Apr 2, 2026

3:33 pm ET

•

15 min read

Adam Eargle, CBS Sports

Alex Caruso is the blueprint for just how successful NBA players on two-way contracts can become. That's certainly not what the Thunder guard envisioned after going undrafted in 2016, a year before the idea for two-way contracts was even a concept in the league. But in the years since, players have come up to the two-time champion saying that they saw his path and knew that it was possible to follow it.

But Caruso himself didn't have that roadmap. He spent a full season on the Thunder's G League team, then became part of that first class of two-way contract players when the Lakers signed him to a deal in July 2017. Because it was the first year that teams were implementing two-way contracts, Caruso called it a "learning experience on the job."

"Luckily for me, I was in a really good situation with our G League team," Caruso said. I'll give a shoutout to my coach, [former South Bay Lakers coach] Coby Karl for being able to get me mentally to refocus when I was down there, because it is a little disappointing at times. I think he did a great job of helping navigate that, because it was the first time that anybody had ever gone through it."

Caruso went from playing on a two-way contract to earning a standard deal with the Lakers ahead of the 2019-20 season. That same year, he played a significant role in helping the Lakers win their first championship in a decade. In the summer of 2021, Caruso signed a four-year, $36 million deal with the Chicago Bulls. He's since come full circle as a member of the Thunder again, where his defensive acumen and shooting helped OKC win its first championship last season. Along the way, he's also picked up two All-Defensive selections to go with his two championship rings.

Caruso's story is one that has been retold dozens of times. It's one that's instantly recalled by coaches, players and league executives when talking about a player's determination and work ethic to get to the league. So it makes sense to be the gold standard of two-way success stories. But when two-way deals were introduced with the start of the 2017-18 season, the intention was never about finding potential All-Star players or All-Defensive level guys.

Adam Simon, the assistant general manager of the Miami Heat, was part of a committee that spearheaded the idea of adding two-way contracts to the NBA. He helped present the idea to the league with the hope of adding just one two-way spot. The league instead added two spots at first, then expanded to a third with the start of the 2023-24 season.

"It was mostly about protecting like, hey, you sat there all summer and developed a player, and they go to camp with you, and now you're giving them a bonus to go to your G League team, and boom, some team was poaching your player," Simon told CBS Sports. "And the second was having enough players for practices that they could be on your roster, because you weren't allowed to have extra players hanging around."

No G League player is bound to a contract by their respective team. Instead, they sign a contract with the G League on a year-to-year basis. They could be called up to play for any NBA team, regardless of what G League jersey they wear. But the addition of the two-way contract allows teams to protect up to three players who are essentially off-limits to other teams trying to sign them.

The reaction to the idea of adding two-way roster spots was positive. However, it wasn't without some pushback. Some teams preferred to have a giant pool of free agents in the G League as opposed to having a set number of players assigned to particular teams, a league executive who was instrumental in the creation of two-way contracts told CBS Sports. But whatever criticism existed was drowned out by the overwhelming support for the idea, and it became part of the league's CBA in 2017.

Despite the initial idea being a way for teams to have extra bodies around for practice or to keep other teams from stealing their talent, it quickly became an avenue for teams to find some of the best role players in the league.

Not every player on a two-way contract is going to have the success Caruso has had to this point. But the groundwork that Caruso and others laid has made younger players like Denver Nuggets forward Spencer Jones look at two-way contracts as a viable path into the NBA.

"I knew the numbers, so I knew it was unlikely [to make the jump to the NBA], but I did see it as a path," Jones said.

Jones didn't expect to get much playing time the first year on a two-way deal with the Nuggets. But when they brought him back on another two-way contract this season, his mentality shifted. "The second yea