NBA owners and players met for more than eight hours with federal mediator George Cohen in New York on Saturday but were unable to negotiate a resolution to the ongoing labour dispute. Revenue splitting remains the primary obstacle that led team owners to lock the players out on July 1 and has resulted in the cancelation of the first month of the NBA schedule.
Following Saturday’s latest round of negotiations, NBA commissioner David Stern spoke to the media at a hastily arranged press conference.
Stern explained that the owners had adopted five of six recommendations from the mediator in a proposal that would give the players between 49 and 51 percent of basketball related revenues.
The owners have set a deadline of Wednesday for the players to accept the proposal or they will rescind that tender and instead offer 47 percent of revenues with elements of a flexible salary cap.
The proposal was not well received by the players’ association negotiators.
“We’ve been given the ultimatum, and our answer is, ‘That’s not acceptable to us’,” players association president Derek Fisher told reporters.
“There’d be no way in the world we’d ever get to 51 percent.”