An important round of NBA labor talks was broken off yesterday without much progress. Players made a few concessions (the most important being lowering their share of revenue to 53 percent), owners made a few concessions (dropping a demand for a hard salary cap) and the sides walked away without any formal progress made.
Afterwards, the NBA officially canceled the remainder of the preseason. With regular-season tipoff less than four weeks away, David Stern has also put a deadline on when a deal must be reached in order to preserve the entire season:
NBA Commissioner David Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver announced the cancellation of the final 114 preseason games and set Monday as the deadline to save the start of the regular season. But the possibility that the league will lose regular season games for the first time since the lockout-shortened season in 1998-99 became more likely when the NBA and the players’ union failed to come closer on an agreement and left the meeting without scheduling another bargaining session.
With that last tidbit — there are no more sessions scheduled — it’s looking more and more like both sides are hunkered down, prepared for a shortened season.