NBA Training Camp to be Postponed Due to Lockout

After a negotiating session on Thursday in New York the NBA is expected to announce that they will postpone the beginning of training camps and cancel exhibition games for this season. The NBA and the Players Union are still divided over issues like how much money players will receive from basketball-related revenue. The last collective bargaining agreement granted the players 57 percent and sources say that the NBA wants to reduce that number to well below 50 percent.

The players most recently offered to reduce their share of basketball related revenue to 54 percent with a mechanism to increase the amount if future revenue increased. Owners rejected this and offered the players 46 percent of the money.

Whenever a deal is done it is expected to take two weeks to write out the terms and negotiate the minutiae that comes along with a deal of this magnitude. There must also be a period for teams to sign free agents and host a training camp, which many agree would need to be at least four weeks long. To avoid postponing or canceling regular season games a deal needs to be done by the last week in September.

The regular season is supposed to begin on the first of November with the Dallas Mavericks hosting the Chicago Bulls. This would be possible if the players reported to camps on October 3rd.

Leaving the meeting Thursday both sides seemed to be frustrated with the lack of progress being made. The players thought they had given considerable financial concessions only to find that the owners were not willing to leave the current salary cap system in place. Commissioner David Stern said that the owners' labor relations committee is going to talk today and that both sides are hoping to meet again next week.