NBA owners and players met for more than five hours in Manhattan on Wednesday and the two sides have agreed to meet again on Thursday and they may meet again on Thursday.
That is the report via twitter from hoops writers on the scene (like CBS’s Ken Berger and the New York Times Howard Beck).
We have no news about what was discussed or what kind of progress was made — the two sides remain in radio silence on how things are going. Maybe this tweet of a quote by David Stern sums it up best, via Berger.
We kind of feel like Jared Dudley does about all this — we don’t know how much progress is being made on the big issue of how to define and divide up the league’s Basketball Related Income, but the fact the sides are talking on consecutive days shows things are serious now.
Which is good news for everyone. That doesn’t mean there is frustration — particularly from agents. These are people used to being in control and in the middle of the negotiations; sitting on the outside watching is clearly a challenge. At a players and agents meeting with union officials in August there was a shouting match, Adrian Wojnarowski reports at Yahoo. The agents favored an aggressive policy of decertification and lawsuits, the union leadership has been more patient.
Which was the better strategy we may have a better idea in a few weeks. But for now, there seems to be at least a little progress toward ending this thing.