NBA Lockout: Owners and Players to Talk Turkey over Turkey

David Stern's deadline of doom passed a couple of hours ago, but the NBA's players and owners are still talking.

That has to be a good sign, right?

I think so. Stern had set a 5:00 p.m. ET deadline for the union to accept the league's latest labor proposal, which according to ESPN called for players to receive between 49 and 51 percent of basketball-related income, but the two sides have gone past that and then some.

Courtesy of TNT's David Aldridge, we now have a sign that the owners and players are gearing up to stay even later:

Dinner, eh? Make of that what we will, eh? Don't mind if I do.

Anybody who has ever pulled an all-nighter knows you can't do so on an empty stomach. Heck, I used to pull all-nighters all the time back in my college days at UC Berkeley and I never did so without a Top Dog hot dog and a handful of Kingpin donuts in my belly.

I'm going to presume that the NBA's players and owners can afford to eat a little more richly than I was able to, but the idea is the same. If they didn't think they could get any further tonight, they would have broken off their talks and had dinner elsewhere on their own time.

If you don't want to take my word for it, take Howard Beck's word for it. He's been covering the lockout all along for The New York Times, and he thinks the owners and players are just getting started:

Settle in, yes, but cross your fingers, too. There doesn't seem to be much hope that these two sides can strike a deal today, but there is at least some hope.