NBA owners and locked-out players met with a federal mediator for more than 16 hours before the longest contract negotiating session of the bitter money dispute ended yesterday with no public comments.
The first two weeks of the 2011-2012 season have already been wiped out and NBA commissioner David Stern said that more games could be lost if the two sides, widely split on how to divide revenues, could not make progress this week.
The marathon session was the longest since the lockout began on July 1 and the first to feature US mediator George Cohen, who entered a similar collective bargaining dispute earlier this year with American football owners and players.
Cohen asked both sides to refrain from making comments to the media and those involved in the Manhattan talks complied when the session broke up just after 2 a m. yesterday, the 111th day of the shutdown.
“We have a gag order,” NBA union executive director Billy Hunter said.
Whether any movement was made towards a new deal was unknown but talks were set to resume this morning even as NBA owners were set to begin two days of meetings later in the day.
NBA commissioner David Stern had hinted that games as far off as Christmas might be at risk if there was no progress towards a new deal this week, although players said they saw that comment as a negotiating ploy.
NBA owners and players are stalemated in the first shutdown of the league since the 1998-99 season was reduced from 82 to 50 games per club over similar issues.
Billionaire owners and multi-millionaire NBA players each want about 53 per cent of revenues, which would represent a four per cent cut from about $2.17 billion that players divided last year from the contract that expired July 1.
Owners want to exclude more income from the revenues that must be shared with players and they want a larger chunk of the shared money as well, plus a salary cap without the numerous exceptions that were in the prior contract.
Players have already agreed to cuts they say would provide the league $1.3 billion over six years and do not want a salary cap.