November 10th, 2011 
Russ Loede 
Posted in The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association negotiated Wednesday for eight hours past the league’s stated 5 p.m. ET deadline for a deal and made sufficient-enough progress to schedule another round of talks for noon ET, Thursday.
Officials on both sides spoke modestly about what was achieved during a session that lasted 12 hours in total and cautioned against getting swept up in the latest wave of optimism around the league that a deal to finally end the 133-day lockout is near.
“There was enough give and take on both sides to merit us both coming back tomorrow,” union executive director Billy Hunter said late Wednesday.
The union was hoping for more after Hunter and union president Derek Fisher, for the first time since the lockout began, were authorized Tuesday by player reps from 29 of the league’s 30 teams to accept a 50/50 split in annual Basketball Related Income if they could secure concessions from the league on the five or so remaining “system” issues that have kept the sides from striking a deal.
NBA.com reported that an unspecified amount of progress was made on three of those system issues, but that the parties continue to struggle to find compromise on the parameters of a workable mid-level exception and face “a couple of new issues added to [the] mix.”
The various restrictions and penalties that owners continue to insist on to regulate teams that stray into luxury-tax territory, sources say, are where the sides continue to snag.
Another major hurdle, sources say, is the knowledge shared by both Hunter and NBA commissioner David Stern that the votes to approve any deal are likely to be closer than ever before in past labor battles, given the rival factions that have formed within both groups during the work stoppage.
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