Unless the NBA’s latest ultimatum is a smoke screen designed solely to make the players fold, the NBA season is in serious jeopardy. A number of players have weighed in on the latest proposal, most of them describing a reaction similar to disgust, but those players may or may not have seen the full document.

One person who has? NBPA executive first vice president Etan Thomas. To say the least, Thomas does not think fondly of the NBA’s latest offer. Thomas wrote a guest article for ESPN.com, during which he more or less ran over the proposal with an 18-wheeler, backed up over it again, then dropped a grenade out the window to make sure that goddamn proposal would not survive.

Thomas called the proposal “awful.” He called it “worse than the proposal they gave us last week.” He said he has not met a single person who thinks it’s an acceptable deal. He said the proposed system functions as a hard cap. He said Michael Jordan’s presence at the negotiating table scares nobody. He said the proposed mid-level exception is so restricted, it’s ultimately useless. He said the players’ options are currently “a horrible deal now or a worse deal later,” and he said nobody should be surprised when the players take neither.

Sounds like no season, how u.

But Howard Beck of the New York Times obtained a copy of the proposal, too. Through what he called a side-by-side examination, Beck determined the new proposal is indeed better for the players than the last one, albeit not incredibly changed. He then called Adam Silver, who — surprise, surprise — defended the league’s proposal.

“It’s of grave concern to the league that there is an enormous amount of misinformation concerning our proposal,” Adam Silver, the deputy commissioner, said in a telephone interview Saturday night. “We believe that if the players are fully informed as to what is and is not in our proposal, they will agree that its terms are beneficial to them and represent a fair compromise.”

Of course, even if Beck’s position is correct and the new proposal is improved, slight movement on a few issues does not necessarily mean the players will accept the new proposal. To many of the players, accepting a poor deal is about far more than the money. Principles matter, too.

Thomas said the owners “want a bailout from their own mismanagement decisions.” He said the NBA doesn’t try to negotiate; it tells the players how things will be. He seconded Troy Polamalu’s opinion that this is bigger than millionaires fighting against billionaires: During the NFL lockout, Polamalu said, “The big business argument is, ‘I got the money and I got the power, therefore, I can tell you what to do.’ That’s life everywhere. I think this is a time when the football players are standing up saying, ‘No, no, no, the people have the power.’”

Thomas said the owners are equivalent to the “1%” that have inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement, and he said nobody should be surprised that Michael Jordan has become a hypocrite. “Why do people have difficulty understanding that he is no longer a player but currently joined at the hip with the rest of the CEOs of the NBA, who — like Bank of America, Wall Street and the rest of the 1 percent — not only want but expect a bailout for their own actions?” asked Thomas.

Tell us how you really feel, Etan. No need to hold back, sir.

David Stern, according to Thomas, has attempted to manipulate players through the media. I doubt you’ll find too many able-minded people to argue that premise. And that promise of a 72-game season if the proposal is accepted? It’s just to put pressure on the players. That deadline, after which the NBA will revert back to an incredibly inferior offer? It’s just to make the players fold. All these leaks, saying progress has been made, saying a deal is close, saying the league won’t consider a season less than 70 games, some of the leaks even coming from a close friend of Stern’s? They’re just to make the backlash greater if and when the players decide to reject the proposal.

What Stern should know better than anybody, what these blood-sucking owners need to realize, is that the NBA is, was and always has been a players league. Before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird became stars, playoff games were shown on tape delay. Then Michael Jordan took the league by storm, and Kobe Bryant carried the torch, and Lebron James, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Dwight Howard and a number of other stars made the league more profitable than ever. If the backlash against players, against the league, is substantial — and it will be if this lockout continues much longer — the league will suffer.

After already winning all the economic concessions they could reasonably expect, the owners are continuing the lockout based on a wild goose they call “parity.” The NBA says it’s chasing competitive balance, but that’s like chasing a ghost — according to studies, competitive balance in the NBA cannot be achieved by changing the league’s financial landscape. Even if the mid-level exception is restricted, luxury tax is heightened, and sign-and-trades are not allowed for taxpayers, there’s zero reason to believe any proposed changes will result in increased parity.

All of which brings us back to the title of this post: Is the NBA’s new proposal better or worse than the last one? Maybe the answer doesn’t matter. If the players still consider the most recent proposal awful, which their executive first vice president certainly does, whether it’s better than the last one means absolutely nothing.

The NBA is relatively close to a collective bargaining deal, according to many reporters in the know. One of those reporters, Chris Sheridan called the remainder of the negotiations “a layup.” Another, Ken Berger noted that missing the first two weeks of games would lose the NBA more money than submitting to the players association demands, and vice versa. But if the two sides are so close, why has the public relations battle remained simmering? Is the continued media bout just a part of negotiations, or something else?

The PR tactics of both sides reek of subtle (or sometimes not-so-subtle) hostility. In his most recent press conference David Stern revealed a discussion held between Stern and the union, in which Stern asked a handful of union representatives whether they would accept a 50-50 split in basketball-related income. The union was reportedly “livid” with Stern for voicing the discussion, which was not an official offer. But Stern’s talks certainly helped his own cause: by revealing the owners’ (real or perceived) willingness to move to a 50-50 split, a move that represents a $1.3 billion change from the owners’ previous stance, while also backing off their desire for a hard cap, Stern put the onus on the players to accept what could be the league’s greatest offer.

Matt Moore of CBS Sports took Stern’s comments exactly the way Stern hoped everyone would.

The players have to take this deal the second that percentage ticks up, and it will this week. The owners, after two years of bullying and absurdly insulting proposals, have gotten serious and offered real proposals which the union can take. They get back a lot of what they want, set the table for further wins in the next CBA, and get the “reset” they’ve been pushing towards. The players and owners both save face. The players just have to know their position and take the win.

That’s what this is. A win. A big ol’ win that represents the players dodging a catastrophic possibility of being forced into a hard cap, a sub-50 BRI percentage, and the loss of any and all flexibility. Theyv’e done it. They’ve held together long enough to get things where they need them to be. They still can get a 50+ cut of the BRI, and have gotten the hard cap off the table.

This situation the players are in? They’re up three points, and the opponent has the ball. The players can foul, lose the points (the drop from 53 where they wanted to stay), and take the win (avoiding complete pillage), or they can try and defend the perimeter. But in this case, the opponent is trotting out a lineup of five Ray Allens.

For the first time, the players are in control. They get to make the decision on a reasonable deal. They can save the season, save the jobs, save the damage to the game, save their own paychecks, their own careers. The owners have moved, finally.

Give the points.

Take the win.

But the players weren’t so impressed by Stern’s (unofficial) offer. In a letter to the union they knew would eventually be published in the press, Derek Fisher and Billy Hunter wrote, “Reducing our share of BRI by seven points to 50 percent – a level we have not received since the early 1990s – is simply not a fair split. We refused to back down.” Fisher and Hunter also said the negotiations are “far from over.”

Then, union executive first vice president Etan Thomas took the hostility to another, entirely less subtle level while writing an open letter on ESPN.com. Thomas wrote a hypothetical piece from the owners’ perspective and took a blowtorch to the owners. Read the entire piece, if you enjoy witty sarcasm, harsh tone and NBA owner bashing.

So why, if the two sides are so close, do we have so much hostility? Why does the public relations battle mean so much, if the lockout is set to end by Monday and then lockout public relations no longer matter? Why don’t the two sides have another meeting set, even though regular season games will be lost starting Monday? Is this just all the regular course of negotiations? Or are the best NBA reporters in the world possibly missing something?

It’s possible, likely even probable, the two sides are simply trying to negotiate and gain leverage. That makes sense. Using the media to help with negotiations isn’t exactly a new concept.

But there’s a resentment in the conversations that, if the two sides are really as close as reporters say, sparks my curiosity.