The Cleveland Cavaliers need to play as many basketball games as possible this season as their young players try to develop chemistry, but that is not exactly an option during the NBA lockout. NBA commissioner David Stern seems to plan to make that option even harder this week.
The Commissioner went on SportsCenter early Monday evening to discuss things. Bullets Forever's Mike Prada transcribed the event and, well, it wasn't exactly overflowing with optimism.
On the deadline: "We think there's a great offer on table, and we told the players, 'It's getting late.' The only rational thing is to make that deal b/c given what is going on in our business and our industry, it will get worse from there. We told the players ... an offer of 47% will become operative w/ hard cap in effect [if they don't accept."
On the owners being unified: "They're unified in their willingness to make this deal through Wednesday, then they'll be unified in willingness to negotiate the 47 percent proposal that goes on table at close of business Wednesday." In other words, they're unified because I said so.
Hopefully a deal gets done in the next couple of days ... or else.