(REUTERS) – National Basketball Association (NBA) owners and players will meet today, less than 12 hours after a marathon negotiating session ended, with growing hopes of ending the lockout and salvaging the entire 2011-12 season. The two sides, aiming to end a four-month-old labour dispute that has seen regular season games cancelled, are meeting at 14:00hrs. (1800 GMT) in New York City as optimism mounts that a deal is near following a 15-hour session that ended around 03:00hrs.
“There was some progress on some of the system issues, obviously enough for us to come back at 14:00hrs. (Thursday),” union president Derek Fisher said. “We’ll continue to work through, as long as we possibly can and as hard as we possibly can to see if we can get a deal done.”
Negotiations on a new labour agreement picked up steam after reports earlier this week suggested the league was ready to axe two more weeks from its schedule after already cancelling the opening two weeks of the regular season.
If an agreement can be reached by the weekend there are hopes a full 82-game season, which was originally scheduled to begin November 1, might still be played.
Details from the latest round of talks were not released but it is believed the main stumbling blocks remain how the two sides will divide basketball-related income and the structure of the salary cap system.
NBA owners contend the league lost $300 million last season with 22 of 30 teams in the red and initially demanded players cut their share of revenue – which was 57 percent under the previous agreement – to 47 percent along with a firm salary cap and shorter contracts.
The players have lowered their proposal to 52.5 percent