Plenty of Talk, but No NBA Deal

The NBA and its players sat down Thursday in New York for the first time since the latest breakdown in negotiations 13 days ago, meeting until midnight but still getting nowhere.

As it had done before, the union came out of the 10 1/2 hours of meetings asking for mediation, which the league refused.

“As I stand here today, it’s more likely we won’t have a season than we will have a season,” Commissioner David Stern said afterward.

“It may sound difficult to believe, but we met for 10 or more hours and made little or no progress.”

As usual, any optimism was dashed. Michael Jordan rejoined the union’s negotiators, which was seen as a positive development since, back on Oct. 28 when he attended his only other session, he said he wouldn’t be back until things got serious.

“His understanding was that a new proposal was going to be made [by the owners],” Jordan’s agent, David Falk, said before the session, “and he wanted to be there to listen to it. You can read into it that he’s continuing to be involved and supportive of the union leadership.”

Actually, it turned out that Jordan was in New York for a meeting with one of his corporate sponsors and was only stopping by the negotiations.

Jordan left after three hours, pleading his other commitment, then returned later.

The sides plan to talk on the phone in the next few days before setting up any more formal talks.

The parties are still five percentage points apart on the revenue split--the league offering 52%, the union asking 57%--and are also stymied by the league’s “timing” proposal, which would keep teams that are under the cap from signing free agents, then using the Larry Bird exception to sign their own players and exceeding the cap.