Is NBA meeting next week enough time for progress?

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NEW YORK (AP) — David Stern wants progress in the NBA’s collective

bargaining talks by Labor Day. He may get his wish.

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Officials from the league and players’ association will meet again

next week, people with knowledge of the plans told The Associated

Press on Thursday. It will be only the second session involving

leaders from both sides since the lockout started July

1.

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“If Labor Day comes and goes without us huddled in ready to kiss

off our Labor Day weekend to make this deal, then we may be headed

to a bad place,” Stern said during an ESPN.com podcast earlier this

month.

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Next week’s session will include top negotiators for both sides:

Stern and Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver, and union executive

director Billy Hunter and president Derek Fisher of the

Lakers.

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Others may attend, but the meeting is expected to be small. Plans

were for it to be held early in the week, though that could change

if expected bad weather from Hurricane Irene hampers travel to New

York.

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After an Aug. 1 meeting, Fisher said the sides hoped to meet at

least two to three times before the end of the month, preferably on

consecutive days. Instead, the union mostly has been holding

regional meetings to update its players. Stern is finishing a

second week of vacation, though NBA officials have stressed he was

available anytime the union wanted to sit down.

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There hasn’t been much to talk about. Stern was disappointed in the

players’ lack of movement in the Aug. 1 meeting, and the league

filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor

Relations Board and a lawsuit against the players the next

day.

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The union, already fed up with the owners’ desires for pay cuts and

a new salary cap system in a new collective bargaining agreement,

had already filed its own complaint with the NLRB.

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With no progress so far, many feel the NBA will lose games to a

work stoppage for only the second time in its history.

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Players made the last proposal on June 30 and had hoped the owners

would submit the next one. Stern has said offers only get worse

after a lockout starts, but recently told the AP it would be wrong

to assume owners are finished making proposals.

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“We’re always going to sit down and talk and discuss and probe and

prod, and ask questions of each other and deal with hypotheticals,

so there are many different ways to propose things. So we’re not

through at all,” he said.

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However, Lakers forward Luke Walton, who’s working as an assistant

coach at Memphis during the lockout, said dealmaking might not get

under way until games start getting canceled.

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—

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