Second NBA Lockout Bargaining Session To Be Held In Final Week Of August

Howard Beck of the New York Times reports that the second bargaining session of the NBA lockout will be held next week, in the closing days of August. That will mean that the NBA and players' union will have met just twice in the first 60 days of the stoppage, which began July 1. NBA commissioner David Stern had said in a podcast with Bill Simmons in mid-August that without progress by Labor Day -- that'd be September 5, the Monday after the planned bargaining session -- things would look "dark" for the league's 2011-12 season.

Neither side has moved an inch from where it stood on June 30, when the final pre-lockout bargaining session was held in New York City. The owners' proposal involves decoupling revenue from player salaries and essentially freezing the pot of money paid to players over the next 10 years. The players have offered to decrease their share of revenue from 57 percent to between 54.3 and 56 percent over six years.