Goodbye November

It was being reported the beginning of last week by the New York Daily News that according to a source close to the lockout action that Commissioner David Stern had plans to cancel two more weeks of the regular season.  Well after no deal was reached after the players and owners met on Friday Stern has decided to cancel games through November 30th.

After meeting for 30 hours over a span of 3 days the week ending October 21st, labor talks broke down on Thursday October 20th after players and owners were still having difficulties agreeing on the revenue split and salary cap system.  After those meetings were unsuccessful Stern held off on cancelling the rest of November games waiting to see if there would be any meetings held between the two sides last week.  

Sides met back up beginning Wednesday October 26th, meeting for a bout 10 hours.  Stern was scared going into Wednesday's meeting that if a deal wasn't met within that week that games may be cancelled through Christmas.  After getting nowhere in the BRI split talks the players reduced their proposed 53-47% split down to 52.5%, which based off of last year's revenue the players would gain about $100 million more than the owners.

After meeting again on Friday October 28th and no deal was reached Stern made the difficult decision to cancel the rest of November games. The split of league revenue is the only thing currently holding back the two sides from an agreement. It is being reported that the deal is 95% done but the BRI is the only thing that the two sides can not seem to agree on.  Stern went over a "tentative agreement" on most of the system issues in the meeting of Friday which included midlevel exception starting at $5 million a year and contract lengths would be 5 years for players returning to their teams and 4 years for players leaving their team for another.  Once the BRI was brought up talks broke down once again with owners refusing to go over 50% for the players and players refusing to accept anything less that 52%.

No more meetings have been scheduled thus far and it is estimated that the players will lose approximately $350 million dollars with games being cancelled during the month of November. 

"We held out that joint hope together, but in light of the breakdown of talks there will not be a full NBA season under any circumstances.  It's not practical, possible or prudent to have a full season now." 

-David Stern