Ken Berger

NEW YORK -- The clock is stopped. Has the progress stopped, too?

After a 12-hour bargaining session that blew past an artificial deadline imposed by the league to reach a deal or pull its 50-50 proposal off the table, negotiators for the NBA and its players' association will convene again Thursday with what commissioner David Stern described as a "copious" list of issues to resolve.

"There are many other issues, many other issues of importance," Stern said early Thursday, referring to issues in addition to the handful of unresolved system points on which the two sides failed to make significant progress -- even after the players had signaled a willingness to meet the league on the economics of a 50-50 split of revenues.

"It just behooves us to make sure that all of those issues are put on the table, together with all of the system issues, together with the economic split, and see whether there can emerge from that rather lengthy list the ability to make a deal," Stern said. "Right now ... we're not failing and we're not succeeding."

Though union officials disputed the media's characterization of their economic stance, it was clear after Tuesday's players' meeting that the players were open to coming down from their previous offer in which they'd proposed receiving a 51 percent share of basketball-related income (BRI). Union president Derek Fisher had made clear that, in return for that willingness to negotiate further on the economics, it was expected that the league relax its position on several system-related deal points -- chiefly dealing with additional penalties for repeat offenders above the luxury tax, a prohibition of sign-and-trade transactions for tax teams, and the size, length and frequency of mid-level signings for tax teams.

But despite another dose of optimism in the agent and front-office community that the two sides were moving closer to a deal Wednesday, Fisher said there was "not as much (flexibiity) as we'd like" from league negotiators on the system issues.

"Obviously, we'd have a deal done if the right flexibiity was being shown," Fisher said. The bargaining session was arranged by Hunter and Stern after the players stared down the league's threat to replace its 50-50 offer with a 53-47 split in favor of the owners by 5 p.m. Wednesday. The so-called "reset" proposal also would revert to a hard salary cap and a rollback of existing contracts -- both elements of previous league proposals that had been negotiated away -- along with a litany of other draconian measures.

Stern said the league did not revert to that proposal Wednesday, but that it would happen whenever the current negotiating session came to an end if there was no deal.

"We weren't, in the middle of discussions, going to say, 'OK, we shouldn't have taken that break. Stop the clock, it's all over,'" Stern said. "We're trying to demonstrate our good faith and I think that the union is trying to demonstrate its good faith."

But the league's position Wednesday on the system elements the players have said they need in order to justify a 50-50 economic split -- which would shift $3 billion to the owners over 10 years and account for all $300 million in the league's stated annual losses -- was not one that siginified a give-and-take approach.

"They don't want to give," a person briefed on the talks said. "They just want to take."

The key point entering this latest round of talks -- perhaps the last round before either a deal is struck or the process is launched into the chaos of union decertification and anti-trust action -- was whether league negotiatiors would concede enough on the remaining system elements to create a deal that the union leadership can feel comfortabe presenting to its approximately 450 players for a vote.

But a comment from deputy commissioner Adam Silver painted a sobering portrait of defiance.

"The competitive issues are independent of the economic issues," Silver said. "Our goal is to have a system in which all 30 teams are competing for championships and, if well managed, they have an opportunity to break even or make a profit. We don't see the ability to break even or make a profit as a tradeoff for the ability to field a competitive team. All of those issues are still in place."