NBA owners, players could talk before deadline

By Adrian Wojnarowski

NBA owners, players could talk before deadline

As David Stern tries to hold off his most rabid hardline owners, the NBA's commissioner has expressed a willingness to meet with the Players Association with the possibility of relenting on some system issues that are important to the union in reaching an agreement, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.

Nevertheless, union executive director Billy Hunter was still deciding late Monday whether he wanted to take the meeting, two sources involved in the talks told Yahoo! Sports. The reason for Hunter's hesitation was unclear.

As one ownership source told Yahoo! Sports on Monday night, "If there were a couple of tweaks needed around the edges – not fundamental deal points – I believe there could be a deal if everything else is agreed upon. But there needs to be a meeting with David and Billy for anything to happen."

Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant(notes)also has urged owners to resume talks with the players union and complete the labor agreement.

"We need for the two sides to get together again before Wednesday, because we're too close to getting a deal done," Bryant told Yahoo! Sports. "We need to iron out the last system items and save this from spiraling into a nuclear winter."

The owners are threatening to pull their current offer at 5 p.m. ET Wednesday and return to proposing a 53-47 revenue split in favor of the league, as well as a hard salary cap and contract rollbacks. This act would almost certainly move the players to decertify the union, and could cost the NBA the entire 2011-12 season.

The Players Association offered to drop its revenue split to 51 percent on Saturday, but wanted several system items – including sign-and-trade deals and full midlevel exceptions for luxury-tax paying teams – as part of a new CBA. It remains to be seen how far the owners would go to remedy the players' concerns and move closer to an agreement. Hunter surprised some in Saturday's mediation session when he suggested the players might be willing to drop to a 50-50 split, even when they had just stated their position as 51, sources in the room told Y! Sports.

[Related: NBA owners give players drop-dead offer to end lockout]

One of the union's lawyers quickly corrected Hunter, saying he meant to say a 51-49 split, but officials on both sides believed Hunter meant what he said: 50-50. All along, the belief has been the players would eventually accept the 50-50 split if they could get satisfactory resolutions on the system issues that would protect middle-class salaries and not stifle player movement, especially to the big-spending, big-market teams who are typically over the salary cap.

Some hardline owners didn't want to even give the players until Wednesday to make a decision on accepting or rejecting Saturday's offer, sources said. They wanted to force a decision within 24 hours, but were talked out of it.

"There's an intense feeling among the teams who are not on the labor committee as to how a 50-50 deal doesn't fix the economic model," the ownership source said. "They're adamant that 50-50 is too high and that the labor committee should've never gone that high. Stern wouldn't be able to overcome such strong and wide resistance however much he tries to lead here."

Player representatives of the 30 teams are meeting at 1 p.m. ET Tuesday in New York to discuss the union's next steps.

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