NBA Lockout: Owners, Players Meeting One Last Time Before 12:01 A.M Deadline

The NBA owners and players are having one last meeting before the current collective bargaining agreement expires and the lockout beings, but don't expect anything major to happen before midnight. It appears that the players and owners are still very far apart on what they want the potential new CBA to include, and it seems highly unlikely that those issues will be resolved on Thursday evening. This will be the eighth meeting this month between the two parties, and the previous seven meetings have reportedly yielded few positive results.

There is good news for basketball fans, though, and that is that the disagreement between the owners and players seems like a genuinely respectful disagreement where two reasonable parties see things different ways. This is in stark contrast to the early days of the NFL lockout, which was dirty and nasty, to say the least.

On salary cap structure, the income split, and revenue sharing, the two parties are still miles apart. It's way too early to guess whether or not the fans will get to see basketball this season, but at least the players and owners appear willing to talk to each other in a respectful way.