NBA Owners Vote To Give Labor Relations Committee Option To Lock Out Players Friday If Agreement Isn't Reached

The NBA lockout appears to be all but imminent at this point, apparently, unless the owners and players union can come to some sort of conclusion on their many differences by the end of the week. It doesn't look good, however.

The NBA's Board of Governors are meeting in Dallas this week to figure out their side of the story, and while they didn't outright vote to begin the lockout once the league's current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires on Friday at 12:01 a.m.

Instead of a binding vote to impose a lockout Friday, NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver told ESPN's Marc Stein on Tuesday that team owners gave the go-ahead to the league's Labor Relations Committee to do "whatever that committee believes is necessary in order to ultimately get a successful new collective bargaining agreement for the teams and the players."

"That committee has the full authority of all 30 teams to act in whatever way they deem appropriate," Silver told Stein.

With the sides so far apart, one would think that a lockout is certainly looming, if not altogether imminent, if business doesn't pick when the owners meet again on Thursday. There were no plans to meet on Wednesday.