Yes, at 1 a.m. Thursday, NBA Commissioner David Stern came out of a meeting that lasted nearly 12 hours and said the owners and union decided to stop the clock and reconvene 11 hours later.
The clock Stern was referring to was his imposed deadline of 5 p.m. Wednesday where the union would accept the owners most recent offer or face a much more rigid proposal.
Stern instructed people to be neither optimistic or pessimistic about the length of the session because nothing had been worked out.
Around 5 p.m. on Thursday, five hours into the session where the clock had started again, Dave Checketts, a former president and CEO of Madison Square Garden, said on Salt Lake City radio station that he's been told NBA owners and players have agreed to the framework of a new collective bargaining agreement. Checketts said he's heard the new CBA is a 10-year deal based around a 50-50 split of basketball-related income.
Twitter accounts went crazy in the minutes that followed, relaying what Checketts had said. For the record, Checketts and David Stern are close friends but he is no longer involved in the NBA. Thats not to say he is not connected.
Checketts turned out not to be correct, but the day did end with the union walking away with a revised proposal from the owners to think about over the weekend. (See blog post.)
There have been 133 days since this work stoppage began and in that time neither side has moved on its philosophythe league believes that it needs a new CBA that is both economically sound for all 30 teams, as well as having a system in place that allows those same teams to all have an opportunity to be competitive.
NBA
The players, on the other hand, felt if they gave concessions on the economics they could force the owners hand on system issues, namely to continue having luxury tax-paying teams able to do sign-and-trades and use the mid-level exceptions, which the hard-line owners staunchly oppose.
The problem in those two different lines of thinking is there is no compromise. The NBA either makes the playing field more even or the rich rule with no real penalty.
The way I see it, if a team is over the tax and is eyeing a free agent say two years from now, it should become incumbent upon them to make the adjustments necessary to get under the cap so that the franchise can be a player in the free-agency game.
Miami did just that last summer in order to build its dream team.
Owners were once the employers and the players were employees, but when the players started making alliances and deciding where they would go when they became free agents together there was a shift in power that left a question for owners of many teams. Who is running this show?
Just as players want the freedom to explore free agency and land the best offer possible, so to do franchises want to have an opportunity to give their best sales pitch to convince a free agent hes their guy.
In hindsight, Dwayne Wade toyed with the Bulls and Lebron James gave Cleveland false hope. These guys had a prearranged pact.
No one said these are irreconcilable differences, but they are differences standing in the way of a 2011-12 NBA season happening.
E-mail Dei Lynam at dlynam@comcastsportsnet.com.