“We’re not failing and we’re not succeeding. We’re just … there.” — David Stern, perfectly summarizing the 132-day (so far) NBA lockout in two sentences

The NBA owners and players association spent 12 hours meeting Wednesday, and will meet again Thursday at noon. Despite some very optimistic reports (I’m looking at you, Woj), David Stern, Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher all used sobering tones when addressing the media after Wednesday’s negotiations session.

Yes, that’s what the lockout has reduced my analysis to: judging speech tones during press conferences. That’s all I really could base my judgments on though, because both sides were evasive during the sessions.

David Stern told reporters, “I don’t even want to talk about where we are or our current state of mind,” and “I would not read into this optimism or pessimism.”

Derek Fisher said, “We can’t characterize whether they showed flexibility or not,” but did note, “we can’t say there was significant progress today.”

And best of all, for the seven or eight minutes ESPN aired the two NBA press conferences, the station actually gave us a breather from Joe Paterno coverage.