Referees Approve NBA Offer : Pro basketball: After being out for a month, a 27-26 vote will bring them back this week.

After a lockout that lasted a month and a day into the season, the NBA and its referees struck a deal Monday, ending sport’s latest work stoppage.

The league has been negotiating for new labor contracts with its players and referees for the last 18 months. The players are signed for six years, the referees for five and everyone can use the rest.

Like the deal with the players that was turned down and had to be reworked, this one was almost rejected. The referees met for four hours in Chicago before voting to accept the league’s offer, 27-26.

“Not everybody was totally pleased with the deal, but the rank and file spoke,” said Fred Slaughter, the attorney for the officials.

“It was a majority. As soon as I can get hold of NBA officials, I think we will have a deal.”

Said referee Mike Mathis, the union president: “You could say it was a good-news, bad-news situation if you want to. We’re all happy to be going to back to work, but there are some veteran officials who feel this deal wasn’t good for them.”

The veteran officials are considered the group’s hard-liners, but two of them--Jake O’Donnell and Jack Madden--were absent because of health reasons. Paul Mihalak, a 26-year official, said the absences could have swung the outcome.

“This could have gone the other way,” he said. “But we’ll live with it.”

Under the five-year agreement, first-year referees would make $75,000 this year and $99,000 in the final year of the deal. Veteran officials would be paid $211,000 this year and $278,000 in the final year.

The league got the five-year deal it wanted, rather than the three- and four-year proposals the union had put forth. The referees got annual raises of 10%, almost double the league’s opening offer.

Commissioner David Stern had declared his intention in advance to raise his referees’ pay above those in baseball and hockey. However, the union, considered docile in the ‘80s, had retained the Los Angeles-based Slaughter in an effort to make up the ground it felt it had lost.

League officials were aghast at Slaughter’s first offer. When the season opened, with replacement officials working in two-man crews instead of the regular three, there had been only two negotiating sessions.

A league threat of $1-million fines kept club officials from speaking out publicly, but no one was happy. At the two-week mark, the league had suspended 23 players, counting the exhibition season, and assessed $190,000 in fines. A year ago at the same point, there had been no suspensions and $10,000 in fines.

Throughout negotiations, the NBA kept claiming its latest offer would make the referees the highest-paid officials, with the union disagreeing. The two sides accused each other of using bogus numbers, of equating the hockey referees’ salaries, which are paid in Canadian dollars, with American money, and of improperly counting playoff bonuses as salary.

When no agreement was forthcoming, the league forwarded its latest proposal to the referees and asked them to vote. The referees refused.

Talks broke off again last weekend, suggesting a long strike, but the logjam was broken Monday as the league began using three-man replacement crews.

Jeffrey Mishkin, the NBA’s chief legal officer, said he will meet with Slaughter today to work out final details.

“If we can reach a signed agreement in the next few days, then the referees should be back on the court within a week,” he said.