Portland's Sean Marks among the players who will sweat out Monday deadline

There will be a little extra stress in the NBA as a key date in the 2010-11 season approaches.

On Monday, all players who have signed non-guaranteed contracts become guaranteed for the rest of the season. Being cut typically costs a players hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It's important time for one current Portland player, center Sean Marks, who signed a one-year, non-guaranteed contract for the veterans' minimum (based per game on $1,352,181 over 89 games) with the Blazers on Nov. 6.

The situation isn't new to Marks, who sweated out the same thing with New Orleans in 2008-09 and survived the deadline.

Because the Blazers have 14 players under guaranteed contracts, Marks' roster spot is the lone one that could be cleared with no financial ramifications if the Blazers want to use it to acquire another player or have the flexibility to orchestrate an uneven trade. The Blazers could cut another player or Marks after Monday, but they would have pay the rest of the that player's contract.

However, with Greg Oden and Elliot Williams out for the season, and Brandon Roy out indefinitely, cutting Marks has some definite risks, especially given how injury-prone centers Marcus Camby and Joel Przybilla have been.

Because a player has to be placed on waivers for 48 hours -- during which any team can claim him at his present salary -- before he is removed from a team's books, any move to cut a player in time for Monday's deadline will have to come well before Monday.