NBA

Unhappy players to weigh NBA offer Monday

There’s another new, slightly revised proposal on the table from the NBA owners, another new deadline and the possibility of a 72-game season beginning Dec. 15.

Things should become clearer Monday when a defeated Players Association takes the new proposal to the player representatives, knowing it’s not all that different from the offer it soundly rejected Tuesday.

Negotiations broke down last night without a settlement following two days and 22 hours of largely fruitless negotiations. The union sought several concessions on salary-cap issues regarding penalties for luxury-taxpayers and didn’t get them.

“We have a revised proposal from the NBA,” union president Derek Fisher said. “It doesn’t entirely fill our needs. We’ll end things for now. We’ll try to find a way to get a deal done, but right now it’s not that time. There was not enough progress to get a deal done.”

Union director Billy Hunter said of the new proposal, “It’s not much different.’’

Hunter didn’t accept the deal, but didn’t reject it outright, wanting feedback from the 30 player reps. Commissioner David Stern said if the proposal is rejected Monday, his stale ultimatum of reverting to a 47 percent split of basketball-related income and a hard salary cap will take place.

“It’s not the greatest proposal in the world, but I have the obligation to bring it to our membership,’’ Hunter said.

If the players reject the proposal, they likely will seek decertification with a disclaimer of intent, which is with permission from the union. That would put the season in the hands of the courts.

Stern said he is hopeful the players reconsider and accept the latest proposal, and has promised a 72-game season if they do. Deputy commissioner Adam Silver said free agency could begin a week later, and a short training camp one week later.

In order to fit in 72 games, Stern said the end of the regular season would be extended a week and the finals would end one week later than scheduled. Lost in Stern’s spin job, was that he managed to cancel the first two weeks of the season without an announcement.

All that planning may be moot, because the players wanted great compromises from the owners if they were to take a 50-50 revenue split.

The players, however, finally may be ready to cave. Stern said Hunter was “disappointed’’ more concessions had not been made. One concession was a tiny bump of the mini-midlevel exception for taxpayers, bumping it from $2.5 million every other year to $3 million. Another was the owners adding a new $2.5M exception for teams that are at the salary cap.

“They told us they were disappointed in the room,’’ Stern said. “We don’t expect them to like every aspect of our revised players. They are many [owners] who don’t like every aspect.

“We stopped the clock to have the meeting,’’ Stern said of his ignoring his previous ultimatum that a deal must have been reached by Wednesday. “We wait [for] their response now. There comes a time when you have to be through negotiating and we are.

“If this offer is not accepted, then we’ll revert to our 47-percent proposal.’’

Hunter and Fisher both wore long faces at their press conference.

“We’ll give [the players] the opportunity to share opinions and their voice and take direction from them,’’ Fisher said of Monday’s meeting. “It maybe is their last-best offer and we have to make decisions accordingly.’’

Stern said he’s willing to wait until Tuesday if the players’ board decides to take the proposal to a rank-and-file vote.

Several agents are against the 50-50 split and restrictive free agent situation with the luxury-tax penalties so severe, and will push their clients to go the decertification route. There also was talk by agents late last night for voting for decertification today.

A new issue arose that teams not over the luxury tax threshold but over the cap would be penalized if they signed a player that put them at the threshold, which the union finds absurd.