NBA and Players to Meet on Wednesday
Written by Bob Whalon, Tuesday September 06 2011
According to two people with knowledge of the situation, the NBA owners and players will meet on Wednesday to resume negotiations aimed at ending the current lockout. The meeting will take place at an undisclosed location in New York with a small group of representatives from each side.
This will be just the third meeting between the two sides since the lockout started on July 1. Last week the two sides claimed that they would start to meet more frequently. With the scheduled opening of training camps less than a month away, a sense of urgency seems to have finally set in.
The two sides met last week for six hours, but no new proposals were exchanged at that time. Commissioner David Stern said after those meetings that there was still "clearly enough time" to get a deal done in time for the league to not lose any games. The regular season is scheduled to begin on Nov. 1 and training camps are set to open the first week of October.
The main negotiating point is still the owners' insistence that the players accept a smaller percentage of league revenues in a new collective bargaining agreement.
"I could see it going either way," Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns told the Canadian Press on Tuesday. "It looks like right now we probably won't start on time. Hopefully, as we start to get into the time of year where everyone is missing basketball, we can start to concede on some points that each other are looking for and find a middle ground. That would be the best of both worlds."
The only other meeting between the two sides before last week was on Aug. 1. After that August meeting, Stern criticized the players for being unwilling to compromise. The league even filed an unfair labor practice charge against the players with the National Labor Relations Board. The players had previously filed a similar suit with the NLRB.
Now Stern and players' association president Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers are saying that a new deal can be agreed upon through negotiation and not litigation. NBA fans certainly hope that is the case.
With the season fast approaching, the sides need to get serious in their negotiations in order to prevent the loss of any games to the lockout. Both sides said that there would be additional meetings if Wednesday's session goes well.
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