Mary Altaffer/AP

 

Spurs forward Matt Bonner arrives at a midtown hotel for Thursday's negotiating session.

As expected, the NBA is locking out its 450 players, effective Thursday night at midnight, with the expiration of the current CBA. The owners informed the players of their decision when a three-hour meeting in Manhattan ended around nine hours before the midnight deadline, with no progress.

The owners' side was comprised of commissioner David Stern, deputy commissioner Adam Silver, Garden CEO Jim Dolan and Spurs owner Peter Holt, chairman of the owners' labor committee.

"It's with some sadness that we recommend this lockout," Stern said. "This has a very large impact on a lot of people, most of whom are not associated with either side. I'm not scared. I'm resigned to the potential damage it can cause to our league.''

The contract dispute could keep the league's arena doors padlocked for the entire 2011-12 season, a move that Stern has said will lead both sides into "the abyss."

"It's disappointing that they decided to lock us out," said the NBA Players Association president Derek Fisher after a three-hour session produced no movement. "There were no surprises. The talks were direct. But we knew this is what we were faced with.''

Fisher left the midtown hotel with other players reps before Stern met with the media.

The two sides could resume talks in the next few weeks, according to Billy Hunter, the NBA Players Association esecutive director. For that reason, the union is not going to decertify and try to win an anti-trust lawsuit in the courts. Such a legal move would force the union to disband, as was the case when the NFL players went to court when they were locked out by the NFL owners.

"The closing agreement we made was that we would not let the imposition of the lockout stop us from meeting," Hunter said. "We'll probably meet in the next two weeks or so."

But owners continue to push for a hard salary cap and demand major rollbacks in players salaries and benefits that could total $800 million per season. Players want to continue with the current soft-cap system that has given them 57% of the revenues, totaling in excess of $2 billion annually. So it doesn't look like there will be any settlement anytime soon.