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Denver Native (Carol)
04-21-2011, 09:19 PM
NEW YORK -- With time running out and business beginning to suffer, the NBA is eager to intensify talks with its union.

And commissioner David Stern says the NFL's problems show why.

Stern believes football's labor situation, which he called a "mess," was worsened by a lack of urgency to get a deal done well before its collective bargaining agreement expired, something he wants to avoid as his league tries to negotiate a new deal with its players.

"It seemed that at the end of the bargaining between the NFL and the players, one got the sense that in the last day or two they had closed the gap," Stern said Thursday. "I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that's what I read. And you wonder as an outsider whether it would have been a good thing to close that gap a few days earlier, a couple of weeks earlier so that you had the opportunity and the plan to do that."

The NBA plans to soon send the union a revised proposal for a new collective bargaining agreement, hoping it will trigger meaningful negotiations ahead of the June 30 expiration date.

But Stern made it clear in his meeting with Associated Press Sports Editors that he will lock the players out if a deal can't be reached to give owners the financial relief they seek, even if it comes at the expense of his reputation.

"The league is my client, not my vehicle to a legacy," Stern said.

Stern said someone on the players' side challenged him on that before the 1998 work stoppage, telling Stern he wouldn't dare shut down the league that he'd spent more than two decades growing.

"You're going to learn the hard way. That's not the way we operate this league. We operate in the best interest of the league," Stern said of his response at the time.

rest of article - http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=6404677