You knew — or at least hoped — the two sides would sit down one more time and talk before David Stern’s self-imposed deadline.
We’ll see if it does any good, but the two sides will meet around 1 p.m. Eastern in New York according to multiple reports (ESPN’s Chris Broussard broke it).
The league is working on getting some owners to fly in for the meeting, according to Marc Spears at Yahoo.
Heading into the meeting the owners have put an ultimatum on the table, a take-it-or-leave-it offer that Tuesday the players said they would leave. The players want a few more tweaks to the system side and they would meet the owners at a 50/50 split of revenues (which is not really 50/50 because the owners take $600 million plus off the top, but we’ll let that go for now).
The ball is in the owners’ court. They can give a little more on system issues and allow a little more player movement and room for teams that want to spend to spend, or they can scuttle these talks and try their rollback offer that will almost certainly cost the entire season if they stick to it. It’s time to make a deal.
We’ll see if it happens, but at least they are talking.