No progress in player, owner talks in NBA

With only days until a collective bargaining agreement expires between NBA players and club owners, the players decided against making new proposals. A negotiation session ended with no movement on Friday and the league still far apart from players on their visions for salary and contract arrangements for the future with next Thursday's expiration of the current deal looming. "There's still such a large gap. We feel that any move for us is real dollars we'd be giving back from where we currently stand," NBA players' union president Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers said. "They are asking us to go to a place where they want us to go so we have expressed our reasons why we don't want to continue to move economically." Owners will meet Tuesday in Dallas and could vote to authorize a lockout of players if no deal is in place when the current one expires. "We're going down to the Tuesday meeting and what will be will be," NBA commissioner David Stern said. "The one thing we don't want is a lockout. We have told the players that." No talks are planned before Wednesday or Thursday. Billy Hunter, executive director of the NBA players' union, said he hoped there was sufficient reason to keep talks going before following the same road that has had the NFL shut down for more than 100 days. "Even though we didn't make any progress, maybe they felt that the energy and the attitude in the room was such that it might necessitate further discussion," Hunter said. Players had offered a $500 million cut in salaries over five years on Tuesday but Stern termed that a "modest" move and Hunter said no new offer was made because "the one that we made previously was sufficient."