Players to vote on revised proposal

The NBA will have a 72-game season, starting on Dec. 15, if the players approve a revised proposal that was presented by the league Thursday night. The union will hold a meeting with its 30 player representatives early next week, which will decide the fate of this offer and, most likely, any chance of a season at all.

"It's not the greatest proposal in the world, but I have an obligation to at least present it to our membership,'' union executive director Billy Hunter said, "so that's what we're going to do.''

The revised proposal, which is based on a 50-50 split of league revenue and a soft salary cap with luxury-tax restrictions, came after two days of lengthy negotiations -- 23 hours in a 34-hour period -- at a Manhattan hotel. And while the league imposed no such expiration date on this recent revised proposal, commissioner David Stern made it clear that there will be no more talks between the sides. It is in the hands of the players now.

"There comes a time when you have to be through with negotiating,'' Stern said. "And we are.''

If the players reject the offer, which the leaders of both sides said does not fully address all of the issues the players wanted, Stern said the next position by the league will be to reset its strategy and move back to a hard-line position of negotiating a 53-47 split of league revenue in favor of the owners and a hard salary cap. So the message is clear: This will be the best offer the players will see before the season is threatened. If the players reject this proposal, their likely next step would be to seek the decertification route.

Where the union goes from here, Hunter said, "depends upon the direction we get from the player reps.'' This latest proposal was the genesis of a player rep meeting on Tuesday in which the union's leaders were instructed to get back to talking with the league. And now it will end with them deciding if the changes made to the deal -- union president Derek Fisher said there was very little movement toward what the players wanted -- are enough to end the 133-day lockout.

The players had an "A'' and "B'' list of issues they wanted the league to address. The "A'' list included hot-button topics such as the mid-level exception and restrictions on luxury tax-paying teams. The "B'' list involved "ancillary issues'' such as draft age requirement, discipline handed down by the commissioner's office and days off for players.

With a faction of players being motivated by agents to decertify and keep battling the league, Hunter's message to the players will be simple: "You send us out to get something, this is what we came back with.''

Stern is trying to hold off his own angry mob. There are several hard-line owners who did not want to concede anything to the players and, reportedly, there are some who are against even a 50-50 split. But Stern did say that the revised proposal had the approval of the Labor Relations Committee, and he was confident that it would be approved by a majority vote of the league's owners, which would come after the players sign off on the deal.

"We don't expect them to like every aspect of our revised proposal,'' Stern said of the players. "I would say that there are many teams that don't like every aspect of our revised proposal . . . My hope is the events of next week will lead us to a 72-game season starting on Dec. 15.''