NBA players, owners reach handshake deal

NEW YORK – Now that there’s a handshake deal on a new labor agreement, NBA Commissioner David Stern and union executives must persuade owners and players to approve it, guaranteeing a Christmas Day tripleheader.

After a 149-day lockout, owners and players reached the tentative deal early Saturday. It comes at a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for both sides, on top of the fans and jobs that were lost during the stalemate. And it leaves the NBA with its second shortened season, with the hope of getting in 66 games instead of a full 82-game schedule.

The lockout isn’t quite over, but it appears the NBA’s nuclear winter will be avoided.

After a marathon 15-hour negotiating session Friday into Saturday, Stern accepted some congratulations, headed for another short night of sleep, then planned to brief his owners on a deal that could change the way they do business.

Players, looking beat and beaten, face a tougher healing process in approving an agreement that significantly limits their earnings.

First, players must drop a lawsuit against the league, reform their disbanded union and approve the handshake deal. Players’ association executives Derek Fisher and Maurice Evans hardly looked enthused about the agreement as they sat next to executive director Billy Hunter on the same side of a conference table as Stern, Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver and Spurs owner Peter Holt, the chairman of the league’s labor relations committee.

But at least they weren’t sitting in a courtroom, where they appeared headed less than two weeks earlier.

Just 12 days after talks broke down and Stern declared the NBA could be headed to a “nuclear winter,” he sat next to Hunter to announce the 10-year deal, with either side able to opt out after the sixth year.

Owners relented slightly on their previous insistence that players receive no more than 50 percent of basketball-related income after they were guaranteed 57 percent in the old collective bargaining agreement. The target is still a 50-50 split, but with a band from 49 percent to 51 percent that gives the players a better chance of reaching the highest limit than previously proposed.

Owners were warned on a conference call Friday night that a deal did not seem imminent, a person briefed on the details told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Then, shortly past midnight PST, many league officials received an email from Silver saying they had a deal – news that apparently caught many off guard.