NBA Labour Negotiations Roll onto Today

The National Basketball Association’s (NBA) mediated labor negotiations will continue today after its players union concluded last night with the sides agreeing to continue talks today following the league’s Board of Governors meeting.

Full negotiating committees for the league and the National Basketball Players Association met yesterday for about 8 1/2 hours at a midtown New York hotel, order about half the length of the group’s first session supervised by federal mediator George Cohen, pharm which ran through the day yesterday and ended at 2 a.m. this morning.

The mediation will continue tomorrow at 2 p.m. and both sides have agreed to uphold a gag order imposed by Cohen, store director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.

“Everyone is extremely focused on the core issues, the difficult issues that confront them,” Cohen said at a news conference, declining to take questions.

NBA Commissioner David Stern and Boston Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck departed the talks about an hour early to begin a planning committee session that had been moved from earlier today, Mike Bass, a spokesman for the league, told reporters. The planning committee is responsible for reshaping the league’s revenue-sharing policy.

The initial 16-hour mediated session was more than twice as long as any previous meeting between the two sides since the NBA locked the players out 111 days ago after they were unable to agree on a new labor deal.