(REUTERS) – NBA owners and the players union have concluded their latest negotiating efforts with a proposal to be voted on by the players that if accepted will allow for a 72-game season beginning on December 15. “The labour relations committee made a revised proposal to the union which attempted to meet their concerns as best as we and the labour relations committee could,” NBA Commissioner David Stern told a press conference.
“We did that in the context of a possibility that we could have a 72-game schedule starting December 15.”
The players union had hoped for more movement on several key non-financial issues after they expressed their willingness to move off their desired economic revenue split of in excess of 52.5 percent in their favour.
“Right now we have what we would characterise as a revised proposal from the NBA. It does not meet us entirely on the system issues that we felt were extremely important to try and close this deal out,” said NBA Players’ Association president Derek Fisher.
“Obviously, we still would like to negotiate and a find a way to get a deal done. But right now is not that time.”
Stern expressed that should the union not accept their latest proposal the owners’ negotiating position would switch to a less favourable 53-47 percent split of revenues in favour of the owners.
“We’ll go back as an executive committee, confer with our player reps and additional players over the next few days and then we’ll make decisions about what our next steps will be,” said Fisher.