NBA players and owners have made some progress in their collective bargaining negotiations

Finally, some good news!

NBA owners and players union representatives met for more than 15 hours in New York Wednesday — going until 3:20 a.m. Thursday morning. The two sides will get back at it on Thursday at 2 p.m. (with David Stern saying he would have a conference call with the owners Labor Relations Committee prior that).

Out of all that we have a glimmer of hope.

“The energy in the room has been good, the back and forth has been good,” NBA Commissioner David Stern said

Through the day Thursday there were multiple reports that the two sides made progress discussing “system issues” — things such as the luxury tax and length of contracts. Both sides confirmed that.

“We were able to work through a number of different issues today regarding our system,” union president Derek Fisher said. “We can’t say that major progress was made in any way but there was some progress on some of our system issues.”

That leaves the big issue — the split of revenue, or basketball related income (BRI) — untouched. BRI was not discussed at all on Wednesday, both sides confirmed.

“I think we’ll turn to the split when we finish with the system…” Stern said. “Right now it has been profitable to turn to the system.”

In the old system the players got 57 percent of BRI, they have offered to come down to 52.5 percent, but the owners have not budged off 50 percent. The system issues the two sides discussed would impact salaries and BRI, but at the end of the day the split is the key issue.

Keep it up gentlemen, there is still time to save this season!!

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