NBA saves season; to have 66-game schedule starting Christmas Day
The NBA will be back on Christmas Day, pending approval of a tentative settlement of a lengthy, combustible lockout that came closer than ever before in league history to swallowing an entire season.
A 66-game schedule beginning with a triple-header -- likely the originally intended season openers centered around a Finals rematch between Miami and Dallas -- will begin Dec. 25 once the agreement is finalized, vetted by an army of attorneys and approved by the players and owners.
"We expect our labor relations committee to endorse this deal, this tentative agreement, and we expect our Board of Governors, at a meeting we will call after that, to endorse the deal," commissioner David Stern said Saturday at a 3:40 a.m. ET news conference that followed a 15-hour negotiating session at a Manhattan law firm. "And we expect that a collective bargaining agreement will arise out of this deal as well."
Billy Hunter, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, which will be reconstituted as a union after disbanding Nov. 14 and taking its fight to the federal courts, estimated that the process -- including a vote by the union membership -- could be accomplished in three days to a week.
"I think it was the ability of the parties to decide it was necessary to compromise and to try to put this thing back together some kind of way and to be able to put an end to the litigation and everything it entails," Hunter said. "And we just thought that rather than try to pursue this in court, it was in both of our interests to try to reach a resolution."
Free agency is scheduled to start December 9th.