NBA Labour Discussions Make Progress Wednesday Expected To Carry On Today

After 15 hours of talks Wednesday, medic NBA owners and players finally seemed to be making some progress over the labour dispute with discussions expected to resume today at 2pm.

NBA Commissioner David Stern, diagnosis said: “The energy in the room has been good, therapy the back and forth has been good,”

Throughout the day there were multiple reports that the two sides made progress discussing “system issues” — things such as the luxury tax and length of contracts. Both sides confirmed that.

Derek Fisher, Union President said: “We were able to work through a number of different issues today regarding our system. We can’t say that major progress was made in any way but there was some progress on some of our system issues.”

That leaves the big issue, the split of revenue, or basketball related income (BRI) untouched. BRI was not discussed at all on Wednesday, both sides confirmed.

“I think we’ll turn to the split when we finish with the system…” Stern said. “Right now it has been profitable to turn to the system.”

In the old system the players got 57 percent of BRI, they have offered to come down to 52.5 percent, but the owners have not budged off 50 percent. The system issues the two sides discussed would impact salaries and BRI, but at the end of the day the split is the key issue.

However, some in the negotiations believe that if they can solve the system issues the BRI will become easier and almost fall into place.

This may or may not happen but movement was made in the bargaining session that left a general sense of optimism that things might be moving forward again.

“I can’t describe (the progress made) other than to say it’s better than not making any progress at all,” Stern said.