NBA could have lockout after breaking off talks

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Anybody ready for another lockout? The NBA may be moving toward being put on ice, just like the NHL.

Labor talks between the NBA and the players' union broke off Wednesday, with the league accusing the union of backing off several earlier concessions while also insinuating that a group of agents was exerting pressure on union director Billy Hunter.

The collective bargaining agreement expires June 30, and the league sounds unwilling to return to the bargaining table soon. If no new agreement is reached, a lockout could begin as early as July 1 -- three days after the draft.

The league and union went through an acrimonious seven-month lockout in 1998 and 1999 before agreeing to the current seven-year agreement.

With very few exceptions, the same attorneys that negotiated the old agreement are working on the new one.

A lockout beginning July 1 would force the cancellation of summer leagues and offseason conditioning programs at team facilities. Training camps are scheduled to open in early October.

If a lockout stretched into the fall, many arenas around the country that are home to basketball and hockey teams could go completely dark. The NHL still hasn't settled its own lockout that started last September and wiped out the season -- the first time a North American sports league lost a full playing year to labor strife.

The sides had been publicly optimistic over the prospects for reaching a new deal until last Friday, when commissioner David Stern downgraded his outlook to ''hopeful.''

That came just hours after two union attorneys gave an oral outline of the union's new offer and, according to the league, changed its position on several key issues.

''They've taken major steps backward on all the key elements,'' deputy commissioner Russ Granik said in a telephone interview. ''We still have more than six weeks until July 1, so I don't want to predict what will or won't happen, but based on the way things have gone here it's hard to see where an agreement will be reached any time soon.''

In its statement, the league indicated a belief that player agents had coaxed Hunter into backing off some of the concessions he had agreed to in previous negotiating sessions since mid-February.

''At the conclusion of a bargaining session on Sunday, April 17, we thought we were very close to a deal, with only a few items remaining to be compromised,'' Granik said. ''On April 19, a day after the players association met with a group of player agents, we were informed that the players association could no longer agree to a previously committed five-year rule on length of contracts.

''Then, last week, after promising a written proposal to form the basis of a new agreement, the union instead advised us orally that it needed to backtrack on several other essential terms that had already been resolved.''

The league claims the union changed its position on the length of long-term contracts (current rules allow a maximum length of seven years), the size of annual raises in long-term contracts (current rules limit those increases to 12.5 percent annually for players who re-sign with their teams; 10 percent for players changing teams as free agents), and changes to the escrow and luxury tax systems designed to limit salary growth and penalize the highest-spending teams.

The first sign that talks might be breaking down came when the league canceled plans for a bargaining session between a large group of owners and players that was to have taken place Tuesday.

''We felt we had to tell people what was really happening. It's not like it serves a beneficial purpose,'' Granik said. ''I would prefer we not have to air this, but people were asking reasonable questions and we owed them a responsible answer.''

Hunter told ESPN.com he resented the league's implication that a group of agents had pressured him.

''This was the same approach used by the league seven years ago,'' Hunter said. ''At that time, the word was that (agents) David Falk and Arn Tellem and others were actually orchestrating and managing the negotiations. I thought it was repugnant and offensive at that time, and I think it's even more so now -- the fact the inference is that me, as a black man, cannot operate an institution such as the union without having some white man oversee and (legitimize) whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing.''