The NBA and the union have not been on good terms with each other this summer; and even though the lockout officially began on July 1, 2011, there hasn’t yet been any real sense of urgency to the entire matter. But with the season’s regular opening date looming closer and closer, and players starting to visualize the reality of not receiving a paycheck in the coming weeks, that sense of urgency is starting to set in.

David Stern, commissioner of the NBA, says that both sides must be in collective bargaining talks before Labor Day; and stresses that if they are not, there may be little hope of having a season at all. But even if talks do begin before the long weekend in September, what chance is there that anything will come of it?

This will after all, only be the second meeting the two sides have had since the lockout began. The first was held on August 1, and although it was originally thought that another two or three meetings would be held, that failed to happen. The union has mostly been busy speaking amongst themselves, and David Stern has been on vacation for much of that time. Added to that, both sides have also filed suits with the National Relations Labor Board, and that has also contributed to holding matters up.

Most predict that even with a Labour Day weekend meeting between the NBA (tickets) and the union, real talks and bargaining won’t start happening until games actually start being cancelled and everyone across the board starts losing real money because of it. That won’t happen until late in September, so it would be even later than that until any actual deals were made and finalized.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 at 1:58 pm and is filed under NBA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.