David Stern has been abundantly clear – the NBA will not alter its current proposal. Yet that’s presumably just what the players association plans to ask for. (Sports Illustrated)

When reached on Saturday night, however, Hunter told SI.com that his intention was to have the player representatives vote on a revised version of the NBA’s latest proposal before moving forward.

“We will vote on the NBA’s proposal,” Hunter wrote in a text message. “The proposal will be presented with some proposed amendments.”

Despite Stern’s threat that this was a take-it-or-leave-it situation, players could simply ignore the parameters he has set forth and give the league a deal that they claim could be done.

Unless I’m reading that incorrectly, the players plan to take Stern’s ultimatum, change it around for their own benefit, and return with a counterproposal, even though Stern says the league’s offer will not be altered.

This cannot end well. It will not end well. There’s a reason David Stern and Adam Silver are waging the league’s loudest (and most obnoxious) PR battle to earn some votes among players – the owners aren’t willing to budge. It’s unreasonable, preposterous, and foolish, but the “reset proposal” the league threatens seems real. If the players don’t accept this deal, the NBA’s returning to a 47-53 BRI split and a mostly hard cap. If the players thought the current proposal was “draconian,” well, good luck with the next one.

Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting Stern might not even have the owners’ support on the latest proposal.

There’s a growing belief that Stern doesn’t have the ownership support to pass the very proposal he’s been pushing all weekend, and that owners would ultimately kill this deal with the list of non-negotiable B-list issues the players would oppose. This way, the league can say it worked hard to cut a fairer deal with players, but in the end, the owners will get the draconian ‘reset’ proposal that many of them have wanted all along.

“A lot of teams – more all the time – don’t like the deal on the table,” one high-ranking league official said.

The lesson, as usual: I hate everyone involved in the NBA lockout.