NBA Lockout Talks End After 12 Hours; No Major Milestones Reached

NBA players and owners have ended lockout talks for the day after 12 more hours of negotiations led to no significant milestones in their ongoing talks which have now lasted 132 days.

Both sides will return to the bargaining table on Thursday and resume where they left off after David Stern said the league “stopped the clock” and will continue the following day.

When asked how talks were going Stern responded:

“I would not read into this optimism or pessimism,” he said. “We’re not failing. We’re not succeeding. We’re just there.”

Union president Derek Fisher seemed to echo Stern’s statement:

“We can’t say there was significant progress today,” he said. “We’ll be back tomorrow … and we’ll see if we can continue to make the efforts at least to finish this out.”

Originally the NBA Commissioner had set a 5 p.m. ET deadline on Wednesday for players to accept the current revenue share model being offered by team owners or face a much harsher option that would further divide both sides.

At this time Stern says he is leaving the deal on the table as the league was “trying to demonstrate our good faith.” Under the deal players would receive 51% of league revenue although critics siding with the players union say if they are lucky under the proposed structure they would receive 50.2% of revenues. Under their previous collective bargaining agreement players were guaranteed 57 percent of BRI.

If a deal is not reached in the near future it’s likely that the players union will be decertified which would in turn leave both sides fighting out their differences in a lengthy federal court battle, thus ending any chance of a 2011-2012 season.