Is the NBA Lockout Over? The Owners and Players Reach an Agreement.

Categorized as: Author: Patrick
Posted on: November 26th, 2011

It only took 148 days, but a tentative deal has been reached between the owners and players to save the NBA season. As first reported by CBSSports.com:

Talks began at noon Friday and ran past 3 a.m. Saturday morning. The NBA and its players held a joint press conference after 3:30 a.m. to announce the tentative deal.

“We have reached a tentative understanding,” NBA commissioner David Stern confirmed. “We’re optimistic that the NBA season will come to pass on Dec. 25, Christmas Day, with a triple-header.”

That triple header includes Boston Celtics at the New York Knicks, the Miami Heat at the Dallas Mavericks, and the Chicago Bulls at the Los Angeles Lakers.

Of course, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get the 66-game season up and running. Most importantly, the players still need to reform the union and both sides must get a majority vote to finalize the agreement. According to Stern, both free agency and training camps will begin on December 9th, which means that teams with a lot of free agents are going to be starting camp with just a handful of players.

But hey, sloppy basketball is better than no basketball.

Details on the agreement have not been discussed by either side, but Ken Berger was able to tease out some information from his anonymous sources, including the possibility that the owners may have actually compromised some on the issues of restricted free agency, mid-level exceptions and sign and trades in order to get a deal done. Yay for compromise.

CBSSports.com – who has already been hitting this story hard in the four hours since it broke – also has a post up with some of the players’ reactions to the news via twitter. It includes a hilarious Avery Bradley tweet. He apparently didn’t get the memo.

As far as GMTR goes, we still plan to be your source for all things fantasy basketball this year. Check back often – provided this isn’t some horrible dream and a deal is actually reached – we’ll be updating the site often with playing rankings, team reviews, and strategy articles. Fantasy basketball is back baby and we are ready to tap that… so to speak.

Other Stuff Like This:

• All I Want for Christmas is Some NBA Basketball (0)
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• Boom Goes the Dynamite: Say Goodbye to the 2011 NBA Season (2)
• Negotiation: Is There An App For That? (1)
• The NBA Negotiates as well as Kim Kardashian Marries (1)
• The Lockout in Taiwanese Animation (2)
• NBA Cancels First Two Weeks of Season (0)

Tags: lockout