According to ESPN talks have broken off between the owners and players and the issue is how to set the salary cap. Apparently there is about $9billion in revenue and the players want the cap set at 50% of that or $140mill per team. The owners want a $2B exemption and then divide the remaining $7mill at 50% which leads to $109mill per team. The cap was $130m in 2009.
No way in hell the players will go from a $130mill cap in 2009 to a $109mill cap in 2011. Sounds like the owners are really playing hardball here.
Mort this morning on ESPN said that the owners have an incentive to carry this beyond March 4th when the CBA expires. Apparently if that happens, the federal judge will lose his jurisdiction of this case and he has given some rulings unfavorable to the owners thus they'd like to take their chances with someone else.
If this is really where this thing stands, it's plain to see that it's going to take a long time to iron this out. I will say this, the owners aren't going through the trouble to re-open this CBA to only get the same deal as last year. I think we can count on the $130M cap going down in 2011.