After nearly 11 hours of talks Thursday, the NBA’s players and owners broke off negotiations still without a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement.
NBA commisisoner David Stern has been authorized by the league’s labor relations committee to make a revised offer.
And the offer wasn’t the onerous deal that would have provided the players with 47 percent of the basketball-related income as he had threatened.
It’s still not what the players wanted in the neighborhood of 52-53 percent. But it’s enough that the players will take the new numbers to their members for voting early next week.
Ken Berger of CBSSports.com reports that the deal is an . But it’s still not clear if it will be palatable for the players once they start crunching numbers.
NBPA president Billy Hunter said the key aspect of the NBA’s new offer is a mid-level exception increase for tax-paying teams for three years at $3 million per year.
Whether that will be enough to garner support from the union is undetermined. But Stern is confident a deal can be made if the players union gets approval from its membership.
“We have both done everything possible that it’s possible to do,” Stern told reporters after Thursday’s meetings. “I am optimistic owners will approve if union approves it.”
The league is offering the players a , Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports.com reported.
“At this point we’ve decided to end things for now, take a step back,” NBA president Derek Fisher told reporters. “We’ll go back as an executive committee, as a board, and confer with our player reps and additional players over the next few days and then we’ll make decisions about what our next steps will be at that point. Obviously, we still would like to continue negotiating and find a way to get a deal done but right now is not that time.”
Maybe next week could finally be the time.
