Word is just now being released via ESPN that the NBA is going to lockout the players as of midnight tonight when the current collective bargaining agreement is set to expire. There were some last minute attempts to come to an agreement between the owners and players today but apparently they just couldn’t come to terms. Here is what David Stern had to say tonight:
“We had a great year in terms of the appreciation of our fans for our game. It just wasn’t a profitable one for the owners, and it wasn’t one that many of the smaller market teams particularly enjoyed or felt included in,” commissioner David Stern said. “The goal here has been to make the league profitable and to have a league where all 30 teams can compete.”
The long-expected lockout could put the 2011-12 season in jeopardy and comes as the NFL is trying to end its own work stoppage that began in March.
“The expiring collective bargaining agreement created a broken system that produced huge financial losses for our teams,” deputy commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement.
Despite a three-hour meeting Thursday and a final proposal from the players — which NBA leaders said would have raised average player salaries to $7 million in the sixth year of the deal — the sides could not close the enormous gulf between their positions.
“The problem is that there’s such a gap in terms of the numbers, where they are and where we are, and we just can’t find any way to bridge that gap,” union chief Billy Hunter said.
Hunter said the union made a “moderate” new financial proposal, but it wasn’t enough to keep the two sides at the bargaining table.
Read more about the lockout and the potential problems it creates for this NBA season via ESPN.com.
