NBA owners, union have another long meeting

Cautious optimism grew on Wednesday as the NBA and its players union were engaged in another long day -- and night -- of collective bargaining at a midtown Manhattan hotel. The sides will reconvene Thursday afternoon to, as commissioner David Stern said, "continue making and building upon the progress we made" on Wednesday.

The sides returned to the negotiating table Wednesday afternoon after a five-day break, after an abrupt ending to mediation last week, and met for 15 hours. It fell just one hour shy of last Tuesday's 16-hour session, but the result seemed to produce reason to believe there is potential for an accord in the coming days.

"No question we made progress on one of our significant issues," NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver said.

Union president Derek Fisher cautioned that one "can't say there was major progress" but did agree "there was some progress on some of our system issues."

Will it be enough to salvage an 82-game season? Stern said the league and the union will "knock ourselves out" to achieve a deal in time to schedule a full season. Stern wouldn't give a deadline for when an agreement would need to be in place in order to play a full season, but only promised that the goal is to "have as many games as we can" once a deal is in place. Union executive director Billy Hunter said he believes an 82-game season can be played "if a deal can be achieved between now and Sunday or Monday of next week."

But before anything, a deal still has to be made and while it appears the sides are closing in on an agreement on the cap system, which includes punitive luxury tax charges to help curb individual team spending, they still have to return to the hot issue: split of league revenue, or Basketball Related Income (BRI). Regardless of how much progress is made on the system, things could blow up again if an stalemate remains in the BRI split.

"Until we have an overall deal," Stern said, "we don't have a deal with anything."

Union officials said after talks broke down last Thursday that the owners insisted the players accept a 50-50 split of BRI before talks would move onto formulating a salary cap system. When the players refused, the owners walked out. But the next day, when the sides reconnected, the NBA agreed to "park" the BRI split and focus on the system and talks continued through the weekend before Wednesday's formal negotiating session was scheduled.

Wednesday's meeting involved a small group setting, which has always produced the most optimism throughout this process. Stern and Silver were joined by Spurs owner Peter Holt, who is the chairman of the league's Labor Relations Committee, Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor, the chairman of the Board of Governors, and Knicks owner James Dolan. The union had Hunter, Fisher, vice president Mo Evans, counsel Ron Klempner and economist Kevin Murphy. Stern missed Thursday's failed meeting with a flu and joked about the negative end result, which included claims that owners such as Portland's Paul Allen swooped in to sabotage the talks.

"I leave these guys alone for a little time and all hell breaks loose," Stern said.

Before the talks fell apart, the sides were working on finding common ground on the revenue split, with the players' last offer a "band" of 50 to 53 percent -- based on the performance of league revenues -- and the owners preferring a 49 to 51 range. While Thursday's talks are expected to resume with the system issues, the BRI split awaits.

"I think we won't turn to the split until we're done with the system," Stern said.

Despite last week's hard stop, both sides are feeling a sense of urgency to reach an accord because the calendar still allows the league to create an 82-game schedule, which would mean full revenues for both sides: the league would get it's valuable broadcasting rights income and the players would get their full salaries. The league could basically push the season up a full month and aim for a Dec. 1 start if a deal is reached in the next two weeks. Stern said the league would need about a month before it could start a season.

But if the sides remain at odds when the calendar flips to November, it might not only destroy any chance of playing a full schedule, but also cause a lack of motivation to push for more talks. Players have been keeping themselves busy with playing in charity games around the country. There is a six-game "World All-Star Classic" scheduled to open Saturday in Puerto Rico that was to include a host of NBA stars. But this week several of them, including Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony and others such as LeBron James, Chris Paul and Derrick Rose, have decided not to play. Knicks forward Amar'e Stoudemire, along with Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant, are still, for now, signed on to play.

The lockout, which reached it's 119th day, has caught the attention of President Barack Obama, a Chicago Bulls fan, avid basketball player and the man who appointed federal mediator George Cohen, who presided over the failed effort last week. Obama discussed the NBA lockout on Wednesday's episode of The Jay Leno Show and pointed to how the NFL managed to reach a deal in time to save their season.

Last Thursday, however, Holt said the NBA is in a "very different situation."

"The NFL essentially was fighting over how to divide more riches," Holt said. "We're trying to figure out how to get our expenses down."

But Obama also said both sides in the NBA labor battle needs to consider more than just their own interests.

"The need to just remind themselves that the reason they are so successful is because a whole bunch of folks out there love basketball," Obama said. "Basketball has actually done well, but these kinds of lockouts, a lot of times it takes a long time to recover."

The sides have little time to recover from Wednesday's marathon session before getting back to work. As he exited to a dark Manhattan street at about 4 a.m., Stern seemed to already look forward to returning to the posh hotel to pick up where the talks had left off.

"The energy in the room," he said, "has been good."

Said Fisher: "We'll see where we can go from here."