Saturday’s NBA Talks Canceled

In keeping with the spirit of the season, members of the NBA family learned Wednesday that they will be able to spend this holiday weekend at home with their loved ones, without any interruptions for talks aimed at ending the lockout, which have been called off.

This followed Tuesday’s cancellation of NBC’s Christmas doubleheader that included the Laker game against the Phoenix Suns. This was an unofficial way of canceling the rest of the December schedule, which means players and owners have now forfeited more than 30% of their salaries and gate receipts.

The cancellation of talks followed the latest negotiating pratfall, in which union officials again pronounced themselves optimistic after what everyone described as a productive bargaining session, only to discover a “misunderstanding” days later.

It happened three weeks ago, in a dispute about the NBA’s “unlimited escrow” proposal, after which the parties broke off talks for two weeks.

The league softened its proposal last week when they reconvened, to the point that after Friday’s nine-hour meeting, players union chief Billy Hunter said he could accept the NBA proposal.

But upon further review, the union announced three days later that it had misunderstood the proposal.

Hunter says the league then faxed him a three-point list of conditions, without which it said it saw no point in meeting Saturday.

Hunter says he refused and the meeting was canceled.

The NBA tacitly confirmed Hunter’s claim in a statement by its counsel, Jeff Mishkin, suggesting that it had made three requests of Hunter as a prerequisite for meeting, which he had rejected.

This put everyone back in name-calling mode, with Hunter railing at the NBA for spurning the union’s pleas to meet, and Mishkin charging “the union leadership continues to make a mockery of the collective bargaining process at a tragic economic cost to its members.”

Said Hunter in a conference call: “Our players want to meet. We’re prepared to function with the greatest urgency in an effort to reach some accord but we can’t negotiate against ourselves and we’re not going to negotiate with a gun to our head.”

For a while, they won’t be negotiating, period.