NBA Lockout: Negotiations Stall, Start of 2011 Season in Jeopardy
The NBA has been in lockout mode for three months now, but indications were that things would come to a head on Tuesday. NBA Players' Association president Derek Fisher described it (via ESPN) as a "very huge day" for the negotiations between the league's players and owners.
Right now, Tuesday is looking more like a dark day for the negotiations. Roughly an hour ago, the owners and players called it quits for the day, and the news coming out is not good at all.
The fear going into today was that the 2011-2012 regular season would officially be put in jeopardy, and Fisher indicated that this is exactly what has happened.
Here's what Fisher had to say, per Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski:
As for if and when the lockout will come to an end, Fisher indicated that the ball is solely in the owners' court.
If the owners are going to end the lockout, they're going to have to get the players to agree to what they deem to be a reasonable split of basketball-related income. The players got 57 percent of the basketball revenues under the old collective bargaining agreement, and the owners are looking to even things out.
Courtesy of TNT's David Aldridge, we know that the players agreed to lower their share of the revenues:
If you believe NBA Players' Association head honcho Billy Hunter, that just wasn't good enough for the owners. Berger reported that they wanted to even things out even more:
To give you an idea of just how far apart the two sides are, Berger wrote a short while after the talks concluded that the difference is roughly $80 million per year. Given where they started, the two sides have definitely narrowed the gap, but they obviously weren't able to come to a mutually beneficial agreement during this "very huge day."
Either way, the writing is certainly on the wall that they are not going to reach an agreement anytime soon. In fact, Hunter indicated that negotiations may not even resume any time soon.
Via Wojnarowski, this is what Hunter had to say:
If you're at all curious when the NBA is going to start canceling games, Aldridge reported that it's going to happen very soon:
So unless something can get done in the next week, the NBA lockout is going to start eating into the regular season in a few days' time.
Well, there's no denying that this is a huge bummer. That said, I think all of us know that these announcements were going to come sooner or later. The players and owners were miles apart when the lockout went into effect, and they are still miles apart. Barring a miracle, this thing is not going to end in the near future.
Back in 1998, a lockout canceled all but 50 regular season games. From the sound of things, we're going to be lucky if we get that many games this season.
