Agent Says Falk Wants No NBA Season

Two days after NBA Commissioner David Stern charged the players’ union has been seized by a “runaway negotiating committee” which is guided by agents who are bent on scuttling a deal, he got an unlikely witness.

Steve Kauffman, an agent based in Malibu, said David Falk--the man Stern was alluding to--recently told him he was in favor of scuttling the season.

“Falk and I talked about five-six days ago,” Kauffman told The Times. “He said, ‘At this point, I don’t want a season.’

“If he’s saying things like that because he wants David Stern to hear them, I can understand that. But if he says it to me, I feel I have to take it at face value. He represents four players on the negotiating committee and that bothers me.”

Other sources have said recently that Falk, Santa Monica-based agent Arn Tellem and counsel Jeff Kessler, the union’s leading hawks, have been talking about calling off the season and founding a new league.

Falk’s attitude is especially relevant because the negotiating committee is dominated by four of his clients--union president Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo and Juwan Howard. Sources say union director director Billy Hunter is ready to deal, giving up caps on stars’ salaries for exemptions that would restore the players’ middle class, but Kessler and the Falk players have been pushing their hard line.