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Sports

Players, Owners Crucial NBA Meetings to Resume Saturday

Associated Press
Published | Updated

NEW YORK – Feeling a "sense of urgency" to get a deal done quickly, NBA players and owners met for more than four hours Friday and will resume talks Saturday.

With time running out to reach an agreement in time to save the Nov. 1 start of the regular season, All-Stars LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Kevin Durant joined the players' association executive committee for what president Derek Fisher called an "engaging" meeting with the owners' labor relations committee.

Neither side cited any progress but said it was a good sign that they agreed to continue the discussions. Both sides are committed to talking through the weekend, knowing additional cancellations are likely necessary next week if they're not close to a deal.

But both sides cautioned that it will be tough to get there this weekend.

"All I'll say is there was a sense of urgency in the room today," Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver said.

"I think the sense today from both sides is we really need to push this weekend. Time is of the essence, and I don't think there was any disagreement about that by both parties."

Silver and Commissioner David Stern indicated that the union is satisfied with the league's plan for enhanced revenue sharing among owners -- which players had long argued as a way for the league to address its losses.

The salary cap structure, however, continues to divide the sides.

Stern emphatically denied that he would threaten to cancel the entire season this early even if things don't go well this weekend. Still, he repeated that there would be danger in not making progress soon.

"Both sides agreed that the consequences of not making a deal lead us to the prospect of possibly at some point in the not distant future losing regular-season games," Stern said. "And we agreed that once you start to lose them and the players lose paychecks and the owners lose money, then positions on both sides will harden and those are the enormous consequences that I referred to in terms of trying to make a deal."