After negotiating for roughly 35 hours in a 3-day span, the differences between both sides proved to be to powerful for the mediator to help with. Both sides are still apart on BRI and no future talks are scheduled.
Three days and 30 hours’ worth of talks ended on a nasty note Thursday in NBA labor negotiations. And only one thing seemed fairly certain: more games were likely to be cut. Possibly even the season.
Players insist that’s the outcome owners wanted all along — “preordained,” as union executive director Billy Hunter said.
“We’ve always felt there was still a place where they would just not go and they would lock us out as long as it would take in order to get us beyond that place. There was never really a willingness to negotiate beyond certain points,” union president Derek Fisher of the Lakers said. “There was just a line drawn, and regardless of what’s going on, how many times we meet, ‘we’re not going past that.'”
After 30 hours of negotiations before a federal mediator, the sides remained divided over two main issues — the division of revenues and the structure of the salary cap system.
“We understand the ramifications of where we are,” NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver said. “We’re saddened on behalf of the game.”
Source: ESPN.com
