Marathon meeting for NBA owners, players, but no deal yet

And on the 110th day of the NBA lockout, the owners and the players entered a conference room at a Manhattan hotel on late Tuesday morning and did not emerge until early Wednesday morning.

The sides, however, did not emerge with a deal, but they will return to the negotiating table later Wednesday morning.

George H. Cohen, the director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, presided over negotiations that lasted 16 hours, by far the longest collective bargaining session of this lockout. After the long day finally ended, neither side provided comment.

"The mediator has asked both sides to refrain from commenting," NBA spokesman Michael Bass said after the meeting broke shortly after 2 a.m. on Wednesday.

Despite the marathon session, two sources with knowledge of the talks said neither side had reached an agreement on any of the key issues. But at this point it is difficult to gauge progress. If anything, the fact that more regular season games had not been canceled is, at the very least, a positive sign.

NBA commissioner David Stern made several warnings that the result of this meeting would decide if more regular season games would be lost.

"It's time to make a deal," Stern said in a radio interview last week. "If we don't make it on Tuesday, my gut -- this isn't my official capacity of canceling games -- but my gut is that we won't be playing on Christmas Day."

The league has already canceled the entire preseason and the first two weeks of the regular season, which was scheduled to open on Nov. 1. If a deal wasn't in the making after Tuesday, it is expected that Stern will announce more cancelations, potentially into and, perhaps, through December.

Cohen, whose presence provided a much-needed buffer in the talks, met separately with each side on Monday for two hours each to prepare for the mediation. Truth be told, Cohen has been in contact with representatives from both sides of the negotiating table since June, but after talks stalled on Oct. 10, he reached out and offered his services for non-binding mediation.

Stern led the owners' side during mediation, along with deputy commissioner Adam Silver and the league's Labor Relations Committee, made up of 11 owners, including Knicks owner James Dolan. The union was represented at the table by executive director Billy Hunter, president Derek Fisher and the executive committee, made up of eight players. All but one, Nets guard Keyon Dooling, was present.

The NBA initially had a Labor Relations Committee meeting scheduled for Wednesday, but that was canceled by the decision to continue negotiations with the union. The league also had scheduled a Board of Governors meeting for Thursday.