The National Basketball Association canceled its entire preseason schedule and will scrap the first two weeks of the regular season if the league doesn’t reach a new labor agreement with its players by Monday.
“We weren’t able to make the progress that we’d hoped we’d be able to make and we weren’t able to continue the negotiations,” NBA Commissioner David Stern told reporters at a Manhattan hotel after the sides met for the second straight day.
Owners and players are arguing about how to split league revenue. Teams collectively lost $300 million on revenue of about $4.3 billion last season, Stern has said.
Players received 57 percent of basketball-related income under the collective bargaining agreement that expired on July 1, when the NBA locked them out. Their union today offered to accept 53 percent, while owners countered with 47 percent of basketball-related revenue to players, union President Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers said.
As things stand, an agreement by Monday is unlikely, Fisher told reporters.
“We’re not leaving here expecting to meet tomorrow or any time in the near future,” Fisher said. “But that could change.”
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