NBA Commissioner David Stern made the choice to cancel two more weeks of regular season games Friday after labor negotiations broke off between the league and the National Basketball Players Association.
Stern announced Friday that all NBA games through November 30 would be canceled, meaning the first first full month of the 2011-12 season has been wiped out. The decision came after the NBA and NBPA failed to make progress on a new collective bargaining agreement during five hours of negotiations.
Friday’s bargaining session was the third in as many days. After lengthy talks Wednesday and Thursday, there was optimism that a deal was in reach.
However, as is typical for NBA labor negotiations, progress was followed by another setback. That was the pattern throughout the 1998-99 labor negotiations, when lengthy meetings on October 28 and November 20 led to short-lived optimism.
The latest cancellations will cost ESPN six telecast windows and TNT four. Currently, the NBA regular season is scheduled to begin on December 1 with Heat/Celtics and Thunder/Nuggets on TNT. However, several published reports indicate that whenever the regular season begins, the original schedule will be scrapped.
(Friday’s news from NBA.com; information on NBA schedule from the New York Times)
