Lockout update: Sides “set the table” for Tuesday

By Chris Sheridan

NEW YORK — OK, so it’s going to get real, real serious Tuesday at the NBA lockout talks. And then …

Well, then we’ll have Wednesday, which will be real serious, too.

And then there’s Thursday, and Friday.

At some point, there is doomsday.

We still don’t know when that date is. Or whether it was already mentioned above. Only the commish knows.

NBA commissioner David Stern emerged from five hours of talks Monday saying it was time to get down to business, time for the sides to start moving toward a middle ground in their fight over what this lockout has always been about: How are they going to divide up the money?

A 50-50 split has always been Stern’s preferred end game, and now we get to see if he can reach that deep into Billy Hunter’s wallet at a time when Billy Hunter’s constituents are telling him they’ve already given enough. The players have been receiving at least 57 percent of designated revenues for more that a decade, they’ve dropped that number to 53 percent already, and they’ll be asked to give back more.

How hard Stern wants to push for that extra money, and how strongly the players resist, will determine whether the season starts on time Nov. 1. Stern has been offering 46 percent and not budging from that number, even though he realizes how unrealistic that number is.

But that is the way the man negotiates, and this, as they say, is not his first rodeo.

“Each side has reserved the right to be where it is, knowing that there’s a heart-to-heart that will ultimately take place,” Stern said after a small group bargaining session that included only one owner, Minnesota’s Glen Taylor, and two players, Paul Pierce and union president Derek Fisher. “We’re trying to set tables for as many heart-to-hearts on as many issues as we can possible have, and if we’re lucky, that will begin in earnest tomorrow,” Stern said. “Each side will come in, we believe, prepared to negotiate on everything.”

No formal proposals were put forth Monday, Stern said, nor did he indicate whether any formal offers will be made Tuesday when the owners’ and players’ full bargaining committees will meet.

But at some point, Stern, Hunter, Fisher and deputy commissioner Adam Silver are going to throw everyone else out of the room, or take a walk round the block, or head to an adjoining conference room, to put their best offers forward.

That could happen Tuesday night. But the subsequent days remain in play, too.

The commissioner is both a patient and an impatient man, he is a master negotiator, and only he knows when the true 11th hour will have arrived. 

“Right now we’re still not close enough to walk out and start talking about major progress and being able to put a timetable on when we’ll possibly be able to get a deal done,” Fisher said. “We’re aware of the calendar. We know our backs are against the wall in terms of regular season games and what those consequences will be, but we still have to respect the process, not rush through this, realizing there are a great deal of ramifications for years to come, so we have to be responsible in that regard, and we continue to do that,” Fisher said. “A lot of signs point to tomorrow being a very huge day, a lot of pressure on all of us in the room. We’ll accept that responsibility, go in and we if we can get it worked out.”