Former NBA executive Dave Checketts — the former GM of the Jazz and a guy once up the corporate ladder at Madison Square Garden — went on ESPN 700 in Salt Lake City and said that he has heard the NBA owners and players have reached framework deal for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. That lit up twitter with a frenzy that we finally will have hoop.
But before you pop that champagne, everyone on the ground at the lockout hotel says they have been told that is not the case. Multiple reports out of the negotiating room say no deal yet. The sides are still talking going into their fifth hour Wednesday.
A tweet from Sam Amick of Sports Illustrated sums up the sentiment of many:
However, there are other reports saying there has been no real progress toward a deal since Wednesday night.
Checketts is no longer in the NBA — he is the owner or Real Salt Lake of Major League Soccer. While he certainly has NBA contacts you want to take anything he says with more than a few grains of salt. He is not in the loop.
That said, he’s not a guy that has a reputation for leaking wild stories or being a loudmouth. There is a lot of optimism that a deal is close.
But it’s not that yet.
UPDATE 6:14 pm: Here is exactly what Checketts said in his radio interview (via Eye on Basketball):“The rumblings coming out of both the players side and the owners side are suggesting that there is a deal,” Checketts said. “They were together for 11 hours yesterday, they met again this afternoon, I think that they are trying to finish this up. I think this changed pretty dramatically when the owners set a deadline.”
“I’ve received a couple of phone calls from friends who are very close to the process who say, ‘We have a deal and it’s now a matter of getting everything straightened out.’ If that is the case, this will be a very big story.”