Stern: Could be no games through Christmas

David Stern on Thursday denied a belief promoted by the players' union that the owners intend to cancel the entire NBA season, then said if a deal isn't reached by Tuesday, he believes it is possible the league won't see any games through Christmas.

"If we don't make it on Tuesday,'' the commissioner said in an interview with WFAN, "my gut is we won't be playing on Christmas Day.''

The league already has canceled the first two weeks of the regular season, and Stern said the longer the impasse between the owners and the players' union continues, the more likely it is that a large portion of the season will be lost. The lockout, which began July 1, is in its 106th day.

"Offers will get worse, possibly on both sides, and the deal's going to slip away from us,'' Stern said, "as may the season. So this is the time to make a deal.''

In this rebuttal interview Thursday with Mike Francesa, which followed union leader Billy Hunter's appearance on the show Wednesday, Stern outlined the owners' efforts in collective bargaining and said the main issues now are the level of luxury-tax restrictions the league wants to implement in the salary-cap system and length of contracts.

Stern explained in detail how both sides previously discussed a 50-50 split of league revenue as a concept on at least two occasions, but the players ultimately decided against accepting it.

Hunter will be in Los Angeles Friday for a National Basketball Players Association membership meeting that will include the union's executive committee. The NBPA and the NBA will meet with mediators from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service on Tuesday in Manhattan. FMCS commissioner George H. Cohen, who presided over mediation between the NFL and NFLPA in February, will oversee the meeting.

"It may be in the act of explaining, we will get a better reality check,'' Stern said of mediation.

The league then will hold meetings with the Board of Governors in Manhattan on Wednesday and Thursday. It is during these meetings that Stern hopes to bring a proposal for approval. If not, he suggested, there might not be reason to continue negotiations.

"If we don't make a deal by the time the owners are in, then what's the purpose of us sitting around staring at each other on the same issues?'' he said.

It is this kind of talk that prompted Hunter to accuse Stern and the owners of wanting to cancel games and, possibly, an entire season to break the union and get the deal they want. Stern, of course, dismissed that talk as "great rhetoric'' meant to spur solidarity within the union.

"If anyone thinks we wanted to miss a single game,'' Stern said, "they are wrong.''