“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.

David Stern still holds the authority to make some minor changes to the NBA’s current CBA proposal, reports Adrian Wojnarowski.

“There can be a few things tweaked along the edges, the periphery and this can be agreed upon,” one ownership source told Yahoo! Sports. “I’m confident that would not be an issue if [Stern] did that.”

“It will be a very slight budge,” one high-ranking management source said.

Union executive director Billy Hunter reached out to Stern and arranged a negotiating session for Wednesday afternoon ahead of the league’s 5 p.m. ET deadline for the players to accept the offer.

The question: Will the owners compromise enough to make a deal happen? Despite the players now offering a 50-50 split in revenue – giving back as much as $375 million a year – owners are still threatening to pull the current offer, and reissue a previous draconian proposal that could set into motion union decertification and the possible cancellation of the entire 2011-12 season.

The two sides are set to meet again today. All it would take is some slight movement from the owners’ camp.

Of course, the way negotiations have gone, Paul Allen will arrive at the meeting uninvited, Kevin Garnett will appear out of thin air to ball-tap him, Dan Gilbert will sit by himself in a corner shouting “fuck the Heat,” Stern will repeatedly strike Jeffrey Kessler with a baseball bat, Derek Fisher will bounce around the room trying to draw a charge, Billy Hunter will scream, “The system, guys! We need a better system!”, Mickey Arison will tweet something about cruise ships and delicious steaks, and tomorrow the lockout will continue into its 133rd day.

Do you forgive me for losing any semblance of hope?

Reasonably, as long as they are trying to make a deal with the players rather than pancake them, the NBA owners would accept the 50-50 BRI split players offered on Tuesday, make system tweaks by Wednesday, and David Stern and Billy Hunter would shake hands with a tentative agreement Wednesday evening.

In a negotiation that was initially expected to come down to money, players have already agreed to $330 million worth of givebacks per season, according to Ken Berger, more than exceeding last year’s reported NBA losses. The problem is, NBA owners have been portrayed as far from reasonable, and David Stern may not hold any more power among them.

Hunter was the latest to question whether Stern is anything more than a puppet for the owners at this point. He actually wondered aloud whether Stern is now a “hostage” of NBA owners. (CBS Sports)

I asked Hunter, knowing Stern for as long as he has, how he expected the commissioner to react to having his bluff called Tuesday.

“I don’t know that we’ve ever called his bluff,” Hunter said.

“I think you just did,” I replied.

“It’s yet to be seen,” Hunter said. “My concern and what I’m trying to determine is whether or not David may be a hostage in his own camp. That’s what kind of concerns me, what’s going on over there. He may not have the sway that he once had. He’s been a hell of a commissioner, but I’m not sure.”

This thought is scarier than Rajon Rondo dribbling the ball thirty feet from the basket, Celtics down three, Game 7 of the NBA Finals, no time left to pass to anyone.*

What if Stern really isn’t calling the shots anymore? What if Dan Gilbert, Paul Allen and Michael Jordan have somehow seized control of the negotiations? What if the NBA owners really won’t budge from the proposal they made this weekend, which the players already decided they could not accept?

What then?

A prolonged legal battle centering on decertification of the union? The owners reversion to offering players 47% of the BRI split and a (mostly) hard cap, which the players would never accept? One year lost? More?

Hunter has already moved the players farther than they reasonably could have been expected to move. It’s David Stern’s turn now, unless he is nothing but a tool for the owners to boss around.

If Hunter’s worries are well-founded, if Stern is really being controlled, these lockout negotiations could soon resemble what Kobe Bryant called “nuclear winter.”

*Who am I kidding? At this point, if you told me the next NBA season would come down to one play, Celtics down three, Game 7 of the NBA Finals, Rondo shooting a thirty-foot jumper, I would A) call you a liar, and then B) jump for joy at the possibility you might be telling the truth.

Paul Pierce indeed led the NBA players’ push for decertification, but he did it with the consent of players union chief Billy Hunter.

Despite being the Celtics’ player representative, Pierce was the only team rep not present at the mandatory union meeting yesterday. ESPN cited sources who said Pierce did not miss the meeting as a boycott.

Pierce’s decertification push has succeeded, or rather, it has advanced to the next step. Hunter said the league garnered enough petition signatures to force a decertification vote, which would take place 45-60 days after the players association officially files the decertification with the National Labor Relations Board — if, that is, the players decide to file the motion. The players are waiting on the results of Wednesday’s negotiations, when David Stern’s ultimatum looms like an approaching tornado. (CBS Sports)

“I think Paul is kind of frustrated with the process,” Hunter said after a news conference in which the players said they were rejecting the league’s latest take-it-or-leave-it proposal. “Paul has been at the bargaining table and he doesn’t feel that we’ve been making any kind of progress. And so he thought that maybe that’s necessary. We don’t have a lot of options and that’s the option Paul was pushing – still is pushing.”

Asked in a small group of reporters if he’s cool with that, Hunter said, “Of course. Listen, I’m cool with Paul and all these guys. I think it’s very important. I’m happy that Paul and the others are involved in the process. That’s always been the problem with athletes, that a lot of stuff is foisted on them and they have no input. Paul has been actively engaged, he understands, he’s been in five or six of our negotiating sessions, he talks to me, and when they had the (decertification) calls, he called and let me know that they were having the calls. And I said, ‘Hey, I’m not at all opposed to you doing that.’ … I endorse what Paul did.”

If nothing else, the players themselves have remained strong during the negotiations. David Stern has been pummeling them with haymakers and ultimatums. Reports have this hardline owner demanding one thing and that hardline owner demanding another. But the players themselves have remained strong. Other than JaVale McGee’s brain fart (vintage McGee), when he told reporters players were ready to fold, then subsequently denied the comments despite video evidence, and a few tweets or text messages here and there, most players seem banded together willing to follow Hunter and Derek Fisher’s lead.

Of course, the players BRI split request has dwindled to 50% down from last year’s 57%, owners haven’t made any concessions whatsoever relative to the prior CBA, and according to Ken Berger the players have already conceded more money ($330 million) for the coming year than the owners claim to have lost last season. So maybe I’m giving the players too much credit.

Wednesday’s negotiations (assuming the two sides meet) are likely to lead to a resolution, or a cloudy future of legal maneuvering and hardline stances. I vote the former, though I wouldn’t bet my (admittedly minuscule) life savings.

On Tuesday, NBA union lawyer Jeffrey Kessler accused NBA owners of treating NBA players like plantation workers. (Washington Post, via Zach Lowe)

Jeffrey Kessler, a prominent attorney for the players, accused the owners of treating his clients like “plantation workers,” a comment that drew a furious response from Stern.

Kessler said the owners’ current offer to give the players half of basketball-related income was not a “fair deal” and that the soft salary cap functioned like a hard cap.

“To present that in the context of ‘take it or leave it,’ in our view, that is not good faith,” Kessler, who also represented the NFL players in their labor dispute with the NFL, said in a telephone interview Monday night. “Instead of treating the players like partners, they’re treating them like plantation workers.”

In a phone call Tuesday, Stern blamed Kessler for the stalled talks and said he deserved to be “called to task” for the remark.

“Kessler’s agenda is always to inflame and not to make a deal,” Stern said, “even if it means injecting race and thereby insulting his own clients. . . . He has been the single most divisive force in our negotiations and it doesn’t surprise me he would rant and not talk about specifics. Kessler’s conduct is routinely despicable.”

I’ll let this ignorance speak for itself.

Decertification isn’t the only option to dissolve the NBA players association and apply pressure to the owners, according to Ken Berger. There’s also a slim possibility Billy Hunter could step aside as executive director of the union, in a legal maneuver called a disclaimer of interest.

The legal term for this would be a disclaimer of interest, which would only require a letter from Hunter to Stern advising him that the National Basketball Players Association no longer exists as the bargaining unit for the players.

The advantage of this for the players would be that, once the letter is sent, their attorneys would not have to wait 45-60 days for the National Labor Relations Board to authorize an election to formally dissolve the union. With a disclaimer of interest, the players could almost immediately commence an anti-trust lawsuit against the NBA, said Gabe Feldman, director of the Sports Law Center at Tulane University.

“The owners have threatened to, in some ways, end the negotiations if (the players) don’t agree by Wednesday, because 47 percent is a non-starter — we all know that,” Feldman said. “So the owners have given the players an ultimatum with an artificial deadline, and it may force the players to respond with their own ultimatum. But both are destructive of the negotiation process.

“Clearly, what David Stern has said is designed to push the players to make a concession with the threat of essentially ending the negotiations,” Feldman said. “And that’s what the players would be doing by threatening to dissolve the union.” …

The question of how Stern and the owners would respond to the players’ own ultimatum is a risky and unknown game of roulette that union leaders will have to decide if they want to play.

“It could go either way,” Feldman said. “It could cause enough owners to be skittish and want to avoid the risk of anti-trust litigation — because if they lose there, it’s a huge loss. … The other side is that it could cause Stern and the owners to say, ‘We’re not going to let you manipulate labor law by threatening us with an anti-trust suit and we’re going to take a stand.

“The question becomes: Do all of these threats bring the sides closer together,” Feldman said, “or push them further apart?”

In the case of decertification, the NBPA would remain functional during the 45 or so days between a petition for decertification and an actual election. A disclaimer of interest would dissolve the union immediately, although — due to the possibility it is being used strictly as a bargaining tactic — it would have a lesser chance of holding up in court.

Another thought I had, which wasn’t addressed in Berger’s report: If Billy Hunter steps aside, he would probably be forfeiting his job and remaining salary. While he might consider doing that for the sake of the union, this option seems like a slim one that would only be used as a desperate recourse to Stern’s ultimatum. Then again, times might call for a desperate recourse.

Ugh.