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NBA, players meeting in New York

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NEW YORK (AP) — NBA owners and players were engaged in another marathon session Friday, meeting for more than 15 hours in talks aimed at ending the 148-day lockout in time to save the league’s Christmas Day schedule.

That deadline has created a sense of urgency because the Dec. 25 schedule is traditionally a showcase for the league. This season’s three-game slate was to include Miami at Dallas in an NBA finals rematch, plus MVP Derrick Rose leading Chicago into Los Angeles to face Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.

After a secret meeting earlier this week, the sides returned to the table to try to hash out a deal. Commissioner David Stern has said the league needs about 30 days from an agreement to when games could be played.

Participating in the talks for the league were Stern, deputy commissioner Adam Silver, Spurs owner Peter Holt, the chairman of the labor relations committee, and attorneys Rick Buchanan and Dan Rube. The players were represented by executive director Billy Hunter, president Derek Fisher, vice president Maurice Evans, attorney Ron Klempner and economist Kevin Murphy.

The discussions between representatives of the owners and players are now centered on settling their lawsuits: The players filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league in Minnesota, and the league filed a pre-emptive suit in New York, seeking to prove the lockout was legal.

Because the union disbanded, it cannot negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, but the settlement talks could lead to that. The CBA can only be completed once the union has reformed.

There are still a handful of issues relating to spending rules for teams that must be worked out — issues that have been an obstacle to a new deal since the lockout began July 1. Players fear that owners’ desires to curb spending by the big-market teams would limit their options as free agents.

Talks last broke down Nov. 14 when players rejected the owners’ proposal that included opening a 72-game schedule on Dec. 15, instead announcing instead they were disbanding the union, giving them a chance to win several billion dollars in triple damages in an antitrust lawsuit.

On Monday, a group of named plaintiffs including Carmelo Anthony, Steve Nash and Kevin Durant filed an amended federal lawsuit against the league in Minnesota, hoping the courts there will be as favorable to them as they have been to NFL players in the past.

The NFL players enjoyed several victories over the owners in federal court in Minnesota, most recently when U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson issued a temporary injunction this summer that lifted the NFL’s owner-imposed lockout. That decision was stayed and eventually overturned on appeal by the 8th Circuit in St. Louis.

The legal system could take months to resolve, so both sides repeatedly have said the only way to reach a deal that would save the season is through bargaining. The 1998-99 lockout reduced that season to 50 games. It was settled shortly after the new year and play started in February.

This season games have been canceled through Dec. 15, but in reality another week probably already has been lost, given the time needed to write and approve a new collective bargaining agreement, have a free agency period, hold training camps and play exhibition games.

AP Source: NBA, players meeting in New York

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NEW YORK (AP) — NBA Commissioner David Stern accepted some congratulations, headed for another short night of sleep, then planned to brief his owners on a deal that could change the way they do business.

Players, looking beat and beaten, face a tougher healing process in approving an agreement that significantly limits their earnings.

After a 149-day lockout, owners and players reached a tentative new labor deal early Saturday, one they expect will be ratified in time to start the season with a Dec. 25 tripleheader.

It comes at a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for both sides, on top of the fans and jobs that were lost during the stalemate. And it leaves the NBA with its second shortened season, with the hope of getting in 66 games instead of a full 82-game schedule.

The NBA lockout isn’t quite over, but it appears the NBA’s “nuclear winter” will be avoided.

First, players must drop a lawsuit against the league, reform their disbanded union and approve the handshake deal that was reached shortly after 3 a.m. after a marathon negotiating session of more than 15 hours. Players’ association executives Derek Fisher and Maurice Evans hardly looked enthused about the agreement as they sat next to executive director Billy Hunter on the same side of a conference table as Stern, Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver and Spurs owner Peter Holt, the chairman of the league’s labor relations committee.

But at least they weren’t sitting in a courtroom, where they appeared headed less than two weeks earlier.

Unwilling to accept the owners’ proposal or Stern’s ultimatum, the union instead disclaimed interest, paving the way for an antitrust lawsuit in Minnesota that could have earned the players billions but surely would have come at the cost of at least the entire 2011-12 season.

Just 12 days after talks broke down and Stern declared the NBA could be headed to a “nuclear winter,” he sat next to Hunter to announce the 10-year deal, with either side able to opt out after the sixth year.

Both sides said all along the only way to a deal was through negotiating. They got back together Tuesday, setting the way for the pivotal meeting that began Friday.

“I think we saw a willingness of both sides to compromise yet a little more and to reach this agreement,” Silver said. “We look forward to opening on Christmas Day and we are excited to bring NBA basketball back and that’s most important.”

Both sides are expected to OK the pact, which would pave the way for training camps and free agency to open simultaneously Dec. 9.

President Barack Obama gave a thumbs-up when told about the tentative settlement after he finished playing basketball at Fort McNair in Washington on Saturday morning.

Owners relented slightly on their previous insistence that players receive no more than 50 percent of basketball-related income after they were guaranteed 57 percent in the old collective bargaining agreement. The target is still a 50-50 split, but with a band from 49 percent to 51 percent that gives the players a better chance of reaching the highest limit than previously proposed.

The players’ side revealed little of its feelings about the deal, noting the pending litigation in its desire for keeping details quiet. But players always preferred to be on the court, rather than in it, and now they finally have the chance.

”I think it was the ability of the parties to decide it was necessary to compromise and to kind of put this thing back together in some kind of way, to put an end to the litigation and everything that that entails,” Hunter said.