Tim C.

NBA Deputy Commish Adam Silver inadvertently spills the beans: "A few of our owners," Silver told reporters at the time, "remarked after the robust revenue discussion last night that we might want the assistant of the federal mediator for our revenue sharing discussions, as well." Silver also has cautioned that revenue-sharing talks have "in no way" impeded progress in talks with the players. But evidently the union disagrees. Well, no kidding... the union disagrees, after that comment by Silver? I never would have guessed.

The Madrid/Barca games are going to be epic this season. Can't wait.

The scariest comment was Silver lauding the National Hockey League’s collective bargaining agreement for being "so successful from a competitive standpoint with their flex-cap system that has a hard, absolute cap at the top of the band." The NHL got that deal the NBA’s small-market owners covet by locking out their players for the entire 2004-05 season. I'm going to agree with our boy Mike here: that was by far the scariest thing that's been uttered during this lockout.

According to the usually-well-informed Adrian Wojnarowski, the federally-mediated CBA negotiations of this week have yielded agreements or near-agreements on the players' share of revenue, as well as the midlevel exception. There's also been some discussions on bonus incentives for young players that are probably long overdue. Who knew the cap-and-tax part of the new CBA was going to be more contentious than BRI? Not yours truly. But progress can only be a good thing here. Edit: go ahead and press the big red button. Woj, not sounding the optimistic tone anymore: [Link]

That federal mediator needs to get all of these folks back in line, pronto.

Apparently, Krasnye Krylya only wanted DeJuan to help them qualify for Russia's main league and Eurochallenge. Now he's free to sign somewhere else. I can think of a French point guard familiar with his skills who might want to have him as a teammate. Take the hint, Tony

Pretty good points all around.

...which, of course, eliminates the entire purpose of having negotiation meetings. According to the union source, the league would agree to a meeting Monday -- the deadline set by commissioner David Stern for canceling the first two weeks of regular season games -- only if the players agreed beforehand to accept the NBA's offer of a 50-50 revenue split. The union declined, the source said. Yep, now we're playing that game.

About freaking time. (I kid, I kid) I look forward to watching Tony beat up on the French League and Eurocup teams, since he won't be beating up on NBA opponents anytime soon. h/t to Bruno of SpursTalk.

Some good news, and this potentially alarming bit: It was at this point that Wade took exception to commissioner David Stern's tone and gesturing -- the commissioner evidently was pointing his finger while speaking to the players -- and "stood up for himself," a person with knowledge of the meeting said. According to ESPN, Wade warned Stern, "You're not pointing your finger at me. I'm not your child." It was a potentially galvanizing moment for the players, who finally got the kind of star participation -- and leadership -- that they've lacked at key moments in these talks. In Wade, the players have have found their Michael Jordan circa 1999, when the Bulls star famously told the late Wizards owner Abe Pollin to sell his team if he couldn't afford to run it.

And the glacial pace of "negotiations" continues. From Ken Berger at CBS Sports: There is a feeling among two people who have been briefed on the talks that the owners will come forward Wednesday with an enhanced version of the concepts proposed Tuesday. According to the sources, among the additions could be a proposed 50-50 revenue split, which to this point the league has not reached in terms of the players' average share over the life of a new CBA in its previous proposals. As for the system changes the owners proposed Tuesday in exchange for relaxing their stance on the hard team salary cap, one of the people briefed on the talks said union officials regarded them as "alarming." UPDATE: Chris Sheridan is reporting on one of the proposals coming from the owners with regards to penalties under the "harder" cap: SheridanHoops.com has learned that the owners have proposed four different levels of the luxury tax, with the tax increasing from a dollar-for-dollar levy on teams slightly above the luxury tax threshold (which was $70.307 million last season, when the Lakers, Magic and Mavericks were reportedly the only tax-paying teams), up to a 4-to-1 tax for teams that go more than $10-15 million over the threshold. There are also separate triggers for a 2-to-1 tax and a 3-to-1 tax.

Privately, the most influential player agents in the business swear they won’t let Billy Hunter cut a crippling collective bargaining deal. They won’t let his parting gift to the union membership be deeper concessions, givebacks to the owners. They can’t storm the negotiating room in New York this week, but they believe they can ultimately stop the ratifying of a deal. They can deliver the percentage of players needed to decertify the union. They believe they still can unleash holy hell on this sure, steady capitulation to the NBA. "The players don’t want to make these kinds of concessions, yet the union keeps giving them," one agent in a prominent firm told Yahoo! Sports. "The union hasn’t been listening to its players." Oy. There's just too many variables in this equation to know how or when it's going to end.

Bonner: I dunked on a girl and got beat in a 3 point shootout by a musician.

Here's my favorite part: Commissioner David Stern and Peter Holt, the head of the owners' executive committee, felt that the players' proposal to take 52 or 53 percent of basketball-related income, compared to 57 under the previous agreement, was basically fair, sources said. So Peter Holt, as expected, is a reasonable man. On the other hand... But when the owners left the players to meet among themselves for around three hours, Cleveland's Dan Gilbert and Phoenix's Robert Sarver expressed their dissatisfaction with many of the points, sources said. The sources said that the Knicks' James Dolan and the Lakers' Jerry Buss were visibly annoyed by the hardline demands of Gilbert and Sarver. How did I know that Sarver was behind this?

Tony took over in the 4th quarter, but Nando and Batum kept the French team alive for most of the game before that. TP finished with 18 pts, 8 reb, 3 ast, 2 stl. Nando had 16 pts, 2 reb, 1 ast, 1 stl and 1 blk. Tomorrow, France will play Russia in the semifinals.

Ben Golliver of blazersedge and CBS Sports has the first writeup on an interview that former Spur Roger Mason, Jr gave to some members of the media gathered in Las Vegas today. "I think there was a false sense of optimism leading into yesterday's meetings," Mason said. "That was a little tough because once we went to the meeting yesterday it was really more of the same. The NBA and the owners want to change the system and they also want to make economic changes. We understand the landscape that the world is different so we're willing to sacrifice and give money back. But a system with a hard cap is something we don't want to do." Jeff McDonald also tweeted that Mason's accidental tweet last week that read "looking like a season" was actually meant to be a direct message response to someone asking how long the lockout would last. McDonald is also in Vegas covering the Impact Basketball "lockout league" for the SA Express-News(follow @JMcDonald_SAEN for updated on Anderson and Leonard).

If any of you haven't heard, Impact Basketball has put together something of a makeshift voluntary summer league scheduled for later this month in Las Vegas. The full roster of players was just announced, and among the players participating are two of the youngest, most promising members of the Spurs - James Anderson and Kawhi Leonard. Also of note are a few former spurs: Larry Owens, Melvin Ely, Roger Mason, and Stephen Jackson.

According to Ziller, there seems to be a lot of progress being made on ending the lockout and starting a new CBA. If a deal can be reach in the next 3 weeks or so, they might just save the FULL 2011-12 season. Good news indeed. But don't ask Roger Mason. He was "hacked".

Woj doesn't specify a team, but I'd imagine it almost has to be CSKA or Khimki. This would seem to be a positive development for those worried about Beast's physical fitness after last year's infamous weight gain/benching. Update: Krasnye Krylya is the team. Definitely not on my radar. We'll try to have regular international updates while the lockout is in place, but getting info for this team might be a bit difficult.

Tony Parker, Nando De Colo, and Davis Bertans are all playing right now. I'm not on my home PC, so I don't have a video feed link, but I'm sure there are some out there. Otherwise, the link above is for the live box score.

Ryan had a good scrimmage to begin his time with the senior men's team, but failed to impress after that. But, the ACB should be starting in about a month's time, so we'll have more chances to watch him play. Eurobasket and the FIBA Americas tournament both begin on Wednesday of this week.

"My agent talked about China a little bit," Parker told Whittell. "... I'm not going to take any decision until the end of September, after the European Championships. I want to see if I'm healthy, if I'm hurt and by then we will also know a lot more what is happening with the situation of the lockout. "If I play [abroad], I will definitely play in France, for my fans, for my team ASVEL." In case Tony hasn't definitively stated his lockout plans to the media before, there it is. Casspi is the type of deadly shooter that makes Tony even more dangerous, so this could work very well for them.

Guess I should start working on that Euroleague preview. This lockout is getting nasty.