NBA Lockout: 72-Game Season Proposed; Still No Deal

NEW YORK — As the NBA Lockout’s 133rd winds down to an end, the meetings aren’t. The NBA Owners and the Union are still met today starting at noon, but the talks broke with no new progress to note, just a brand new incentive for the players should they accept the currently proposed deal.

That incentive comes in the form of a 72 game season.

"“There’s not enough progress to get a deal done,” Fisher said. “That’s the disappointing part. We want to get back on the court.”-Derek Fischer on the latest proposal"

But there is still no deal and the issue has now moved onto system issues like the salary cap, luxury tax and various other gears within the NBA’s revenue system.

“It does not meet us entirely on the system issues that we felt were extremely important to try and close this thing out, and so at this point we’ve decided to end things for now, take a step back,”  Player President Derek Fisher said of the latest proposal. “We’ll go back as an executive committee, as a board, confer with our player reps and additional players over the next few days. Then we’ll make decisions about what our next steps will be at that point.”

David Stern has taken a stake (surprise, surprise) on the opposite end from Fischer stating he feels there is nothing left to negotiate it’s just a mtter of the players accepting the deal.

And now the problems being. David Stern is playing dumb and washing his hands of this basically saying in his most innocent third grade voice: “Well we made the best offer we could and those meanie head players just wouldn’t have it”.

Here’s what Stern actually said: “There comes a time when you have to be thru negotiating, and we are,” he said. “This is the best attempt by the labor relations committee and therefore the NBA to address the concerns that the players expressed coming out of their meeting

of the player representatives.”

Basically we have nothing more then what we had before.

There are a few new amendments to the deal that could lead to a deal finally reached, but forgive me for not being optimistic given the history of our hope that this ends.

The big one is a brand new exception never before seen in the NBA which allows teams that are at the salary cap a $2 million exception to sign a player. The percentage minimum that teams must pay of the salary cap will go up significantly which will benefit the players. These are the answers that the owners have had for the players calls to address the system issues.

The 72-game incentive would be an available option until December 15th according to Stern. But that’s not going to be the end all, be all date and you can bet the farm on that one.

Don’t forget that at the end of September, roughly when I hit my boiling point with Stern’s petty games, he said of a deal wasn’t reached by THAT weekend that the season would be cancelled.

We are now sitting here almost two months later and the season hasn’t been cancelled. Instead we have another doomsday date to circle on the calenders. But the real date will be somewhere in January. The December 15th date is largely another smokescreen, school yard threat but it has less meaning because we all see through Stern.

There isn’t a total possibility that the players will reject the deal but the same odds can be applied to the chances they accept the deal. Billy Hunter has called the latest proposal “not the greatest deal ever”. But then again it’s also not the worst. Both sides are going to want to take the other down with them: Real Housewives style. That’s what this comes down to, as long as the owners are as unhappy with the deal that is agreed upon as the players are then both will be happy.

That’s how twisted this ordeal has gotten, a depressing emo trip into a world where the only way to be happy is be unhappy and have a reason to complain. But if you want something to grasp onto; something to not make you feel so depressed, I again leave you with a quote from Derek Fischer which paints the picture of the lockout we are looking at as we enter the 134th day of no basketball.

“There’s not enough progress to get a deal done,” Fisher said. “That’s the disappointing part. We want to get back on the court.”