In the wee, wee hours of Saturday morning, the NBA and its players finally came to a tentative labor agreement that would end the lockout and bring the gift of a 2011-12 NBA season starting on none other than Christmas day.
Lengthy, exhausting negotiation sessions have been the norm for most of the fall, which made the 15-hour session that started Friday and lasted until a 3:30 a.m. news conference – on what would be the 149th day of the lockout – not too dissimilar, except for one thing.
This time, instead of trudging out separately and regaling reporters with rhetoric and excuses, NBA commissioner David Stern and National Basketball Players Association executive director Billy Hunter took a seat together.
“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,” Stern said. “And we expect that a collective bargaining agreement will arise out of this deal as well.”
It’s clear that both sides were spurred forward to complete a deal by the need to salvage crucial Christmas Day games – the already planned tripleheader for that day appears set to stay intact – and a 66-game season, arguably the least amount of games that would make it worth it for the owners.
“I think it was the ability of the parties to decide that it was necessary to compromise and put this thing back together,” Hunter said, “put an end to litigation and everything that entails.”
The details of the deal will emerge over the course of Saturday and the rest of the weekend, and the wickets that the deal must go through with attorneys before being approved by both the players and the owners are many.
But free agency is expected to start on Dec. 9, which means it will before that when free agency moves should begin to come clear.
Reaction from Wizards players also came in the predawn hours, with Trevor Booker, whose birthday was Friday, tweeting at 4:29 a.m., “Id like to think my bday is good luck.”
Even earlier, at 3:41 a.m., Andray Blatche tweeted, “Is it true is it really over.”
Alexander Raskovic, Wizards rookie Jan Vesely’s European agent, said he expected to meet with his client this weekend, ending an email exchange with, “See you in DC.”
