He’s a fan: President Barack Obama gives a thumbs-up when told about the tentative settlement, after he finished playing basketball at Fort McNair in Washington this morning. (AFP/Getty Images)
Early this morning, NBA fans received their first Christmas gift: a tentative agreement to end the 149-day lockout.
One final, 15-hour marathon negotiating session brought together the final elements of a new collective bargaining agreement that fans have been yearning for since owners locked out the players July 1.
The deal will allow the league to begin its season on Christmas Day, with the season’s first tipoff to take place at Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks will play the Celtics at noon.
That game is part of a cross-country tripleheader that will include Miami at Dallas in an NBA Finals rematch before MVP Derrick Rose and Chicago close the day by facing off against Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers.
“Well, we’ve reached a tentative understanding that is subject to a variety of approvals and very complex machinations, but we’re optimistic that will all come to pass, and that the NBA season will begin on Dec. 25,” Stern said at a press conference that began at 3:40 a.m. Saturday.
“We’re very pleased to come this far. There is still a lot of work to be done. There’s a lot of places with a lot of committees and player groups and the like, but we’re optimistic that it will hold, and we’ll have ourselves an NBA season.”
Both sides still have to officially ratify the agreement, which will allow for a 66-game season. Along with approving the deal, the players will have to vote to re-form as a union, after they chose to dissolve it last week in order to file antitrust lawsuits against the league. Union head Billy Hunter said it should take between three days and a week for those steps to play out.
“We’re confident that, once we present [the deal to the players], that they will support it,” Hunter said.
Stern said the league had scheduled a conference call of the NBA’s labor relations committee for Saturday morning, and the deal would then be referred to the league’s Board of Governors for a full vote.
In addition, there are still several “B-list” issues that are yet to be resolved, including drug testing and the early-entry age limit, but it’s extremely unlikely that any of those issues would endanger the tentative agreement from falling apart.
“We expect our labor relations committee to endorse this deal, this tentative agreement, and we expect our Board of Governors, in a meeting we will call after that, to endorse the deal, and we expect that a collective bargaining agreement will arise out of this deal as well,” Stern said.
“We resolved that, despite even some bumps this evening, that the greater good required us to knock ourselves out and come to this tentative understanding. There’s still a lot of, shall we say, other issues to be finished, because we have the broadest outline, but I think both sides are optimistic that this will yield a full-blown series of agreements.”
Assuming the deal doesn’t fall apart as the last few issues are ironed out, Stern said he expects both training camp and free agency to begin on Dec. 9, making it a chaotic two weeks before the start of the new season.
“We’re on an incredibly tight schedule, as you might imagine, between now and opening on Christmas,” said Adam Silver, the NBA’s deputy commissioner.
The final deal might not be everything the owners hoped for when they entered negotiations — they originally wanted a hard salary cap and the end of guaranteed contracts — but they were able to extract significant concessions from the players. Though the exact percentage is still unclear, the players went from receiving 57 percent of all basketball related income to somewhere around 50 percent, a giveback of nearly $300 million a year to the owners.
In addition, the owners implemented a stricter luxury tax, which, they hope, will allow teams in Milwaukee, Indiana and Sacramento to compete on a more level playing field with the Lakers, Celtics and Knicks.
“It will allow us, as a small market, to be competitive, and to create more parity across all 30 teams,” said Peter Holt, the owner of the San Antonio Spurs and head of the NBA’s labor relations committee. “We’re really excited. We’re excited for the fans, we’re excited to start playing basketball for everybody involved.
“Whether you’re in a large market or a small market, fans are gonna have a lot of hope, and a lot of excitement, going forward.”
tbontemps@nypost.com