Ken Berger breaks it down quite nicely… according to Ken at CBS Sports:
NEW YORK — The NBA made its last offer that will contain a 50 percent revenue share for the players Thursday night, and commissioner David Stern shifted the pressure to the union by tantalizingly attaching the possibility of a 72-game season starting Dec. 15.
“There comes a time when you have to be through negotiating, and we are,” Stern said.
The players, expressing disappointment that the league did not respond with more system compromises after they’d signaled their willingness to accept a 50-50 revenue split, will bring the proposal to their player reps Monday or Tuesday to see if they will recommend the proposal to the union membership for a vote.
“The idea … is to sit down with them and say, ‘You sent us out to get something, here’s what we’re coming back with,'” said Billy Hunter, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association. “‘Now let’s sit down and decide what our next option is, what are we going to do.'”
The players’ options are few, and none of them particularly appealing. They can put the deal to a vote, and if passed, they would be locked into a proposal that is an unmitigated victory for the owners — one that shifts $3 billion over 10 years from the players to the owners and also dramatically restricts the rules governing team payrolls, player contracts and player movement. If the player reps tell the union leadership they want to reject the proposal, then Stern said the league’s negotiating position will revert to a 47 percent share of revenues for the players along with a hard team salary cap and rollbacks of existing contracts — the so-called “reset” proposal whose introduction at 5 p.m. Wednesday was delayed while the two parties bargained for 23 hours over the past two days.
“We have made our revised proposal,” Stern said, “and we’re not planning to make another one.”
Another outcome likely will begin to unfold Friday before the union even decides whether to accept the proposal — and would continue to progress regardless of the outcome of next week’s player rep meeting: Agents dissatisfied with the deal the union has negotiated and the intransigence of league negotiators already have more than 200 signatures on decertification petitions which are ready to be submitted to the National Labor Relations Board requesting a vote to dissolve the union, according to a person familiar with the plans.
Such a move would threaten to torpedo whatever support there is among the union membership to approve the owners’ offer, and if it resulted in the players deciding not to vote on the proposal or voting it down, could throw the 2 1-2 year negotiations into the chaos of an anti-trust lawsuit — virtually guaranteeing that the 2011-12 season would be lost.
“The negotiations are over,” Stern said. “The negotiations on this proposal are over.”
For the full story check out the direct link to Berger’s blog on CBS Sports:
Miss. Basketball 