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According to CBSSports.com the owners and players have come to a tentative agreement to end the NBA lockout. The season will start with a slate of games on Christmas Day beginning with the Boston Celtics at the New York Knicks.
The lockout began on July 1 after the last collective bargaining agreement expired. Owners wanted more of an equal split of revenue between both sides because in the last CBA players held a 57%-43% advantage. Today would have been 149 days into the ordeal. The last lockout was back during the 1998-1999 season which resulted in a 50-game regular season.
The deal was reached early Saturday morning after intense negotiations which lasted well over 16 hours. The league plans for a 66-game season and hopes to open training camps and free agency on Dec. 9. Commissioner David Stern has said it would take about 30 days from an agreement to playing the first game. The league nor the players have given many specifics at this time.
This comes on the heels of LA Lakers forward Lamar Odom signing a deal with Turkish basketball team Besiktas a day earlier. Many players from Deron Williams of the New Jersey Nets have signed on to play overseas and Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat and Odom's teammate Kobe Bryant were also in talks to play elsewhere. Most if not all of the contracts had clauses which allowed players to return to the NBA if the lockout were to end.
For the deal to be ratified 15 of the 29 owners have to come to terms and a majority of the over 430 members of the NBA players union have to do the same.
Wade told the Associated Press "All I feel right now is finally."
Talks broke down earlier this month which led to the cancellation of games for the month of November. The possibility of a season looked bleak at best. There were some rumblings that some players were not to pleased with the new agreement and are less pleased with the work of executive director Billy Hunter and president Derek Fisher throughout the process. The players who disbanded and filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league will now have to drop that pending legal issue. The suit reportedly could have won the players about $6 billion if the lockout was deemed unlawful.
From The Sports Mind Of RB:
This deal took way too long and they should be ashamed of themselves. Imagine the people who don't play basketball and rely on the NBA for work who had to move on with their lives or got fired because of this stupid lockout. I'm glad the league is back and I will watch the Knicks as I always do. But maybe that's the problem that no matter what they do we always come back for more.
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