NBA cancels remaining November games, will not play a full 82-game season - plumplylumpkin's Blog

plumplylumpkin's Blog

NBA cancels remaining November games, will not play a full 82-game season

Posted on November 1, 2011 at 01:59 AM.

NEW YORK � After a promising seven-and-a-half-hour Thursday negotiating session that stirred optimism in some quarters that the end of the four-month-old NBA lockout was near, labor talks between the NBA's owners and the National Basketball Player's Association (NBPA) again broke off Friday afternoon without a completed deal.
After approximately six hours of discussions, the sides again failed to reach agreement on several key issues, most notably the division of basketball-related income (BRI). Shortly after talks ceased, NBA Commissioner David Stern announced that NBA games scheduled through Nov. 30 would be canceled, and that losing the full month of November meant the end of any hope that the league would play a full 82-game slate.
"It's not practical, possible or prudent to have a full season now," Stern told reporters. "We held out that joint hope together, but in light of the breakdown of talks, there will not be a full NBA season under any circumstances. And I say that with apologies to the municipalities in which we play our games, to the workers who earn their living in our buildings and from businesses around the buildings."
No negotiating sessions are yet scheduled; how long the NBA's hibernation will continue remains an open question.
"I'm not really in a position to say or assume when and how this broke off and when we'll meet again, but we're here," said Los Angeles Lakers point guard and union president Derek Fisher. "We've always been here."
That's it. That's the news. The news, the weather and the traffic. Definitely the business and, in a sense, the obituaries. Everything but the sports.
After months of back-and-forth negotiations marked by several sharp shifts in stances, "particularly in the last two weeks," NPBA Executive Director Billy Hunter said one thing has remained constant � the fact that the league keeps moving the goal posts.