June 30th, 2011 
Russ Loede 
Posted in 
According to Ken Berger from CBS Sports, the NBA will be in a lockout.
BREAKING: Owners have informed players they are locking out.
Union has no plans to decertify as of now and will continue to negotiate, according to a source.
Union chief Billy Hunter said Thursday afternoon that owners had locked out the players after being unable to reach a new collective bargaining agreement.
Hunter said the union generated a “moderate” new financial proposal, but it wasn’t enough to keep the two sides continuing discussions.
Hunter said the two sides envision to visit again in the next two to three weeks.
All league business is officially off limits, starting with free agency which would have began Friday.
Union executive committee member Matt Bonner said, “we tried to avoid the lockout; unfortunately, we couldn’t reach a deal.”
The parties are still distant on just about every major doing, from salaries to the salary cap, revenues to revenue sharing.
As expected, the NBA will follow the NFL with a lockout. What’s even more alarming is what the agents think of the deal.
Even the agents know the deal on the table is a joke; according to Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski:
“Just look at the proposal the owners have made: How do you expect anyone to respond to that in good faith?” agent Mark Bartelstein said. “It’s laughable. GMs around the league have acknowledged that to me. Every GM has acknowledged that there’s nowhere for the players to go with what’s been proposed by the owners.
“The system doesn’t work for the players now, because it’s so restrictive. It doesn’t work for the owners because they’ve made a lot of bad decisions. That’s the reality. This is a horrible system for the NBA player, incredibly restrictive in every way you look at it. If the NBA owners can’t be successful in this system, blame that on nothing but poor management.”
NBA Commissioner David Stern; via David Aldridge’s twitter:
“we’re not closer (than at same time in ’99). In fact, it worries me that we’re not closer.”
Dear @NBA, the lockout hasn’t even started and I already miss your loving touch. Come back, baby.Can we get some cocktails and talk this out?
Let’s make this work, for the kids….they’re gonna blame themselves for Our problems. Cmon. Come back. I’ll tell you I love you more.
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