By Chris Sheridan
NE W YORK — NBA owners and players have agreed to resume collective bargaining discussions at 6 p.m. EDT tonight at an undisclosed location.
The news was first reported by Howard Beck of the New York Times, and SheridanHoops has learned that the owners have dropped their precondition that the players agree to a 50-50 split of revenues before resuming discussions.
Union director Billy Hunter had been scheduled to fly to Los Angeles tonight to brief a group of players on the status of negotiations, but that plane ticket has been canceled.
commissioner David Stern has said an agreement needs to be reached by Monday in order to save the Nov. 1 start of the regular season.
Does Stern have anything left in his bag of tricks to scare the players before his deadline? Wonder who the public will assign blame if there are games canceled.
the owners are being ridiculous, this would be over by now if they came into tuesday with a 50-50 split and negotiated nonstop until today. i think it’s clear that were looking at a 51-49 split now, i dont think either side could argue against that.
I have to agree with this. I was always thought they’d end up at 50/50, but maybe now it’s more like 51/49. I guess that’s not a huge difference, but it’s more 50/50 in that both would be coming 6 percent off the previous agreement.