A deadline of sorts has arrived for Ricky Rubio as he decides about playing in the NBA next season.

Under the current collective bargaining agreement, Tuesday was the last day Rubio could sign a contract with the Minnesota Timberwolves and ensure that his deal will be under the existing rookie wage scale.

If the Spanish point guard does not sign a contract with the Wolves by the end of business on Tuesday, he will not be able to sign until the beginning of the new fiscal league year.

The union representing N.B.A. players is accusing the league of engaging in unfair labor practices and has filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board.

In the complaint, which was announced Tuesday afternoon, the National Basketball Players Association accuses N.B.A. officials of “failing to bargain in good faith” on a new collective bargaining agreement. Other “unlawful practices” cited by the union include “demanding huge financial takeaways” without offering “corresponding concessions” to the players; “bypassing the union to deal directly with players”; and “threatening an unlawful lockout.”

The union is seeking an injunction to stop “the N.B.A.’s unlawful bargaining practices and its unlawful lockout threat.”

Rickey Rubio would prefer to know if there will be a lockout before committing to joining the Minnesota Timberwolves for next season. The NBA's labor agreement expires June 30.

The Timberwolves would prefer to know before the draft whether the 20-year-old point guard, their top pick from 2009, will buy out his contract in Spain. The draft is June 23.

"That is the question," Wolves owner Glen Taylor said this morning. "He's asking how that (lockout) might affect him, if we don't play or if we will play. And our answer is, 'We won't know the answer to that question. You're going to have to make your decision before that.'

"We (NBA owners) are negotiating with the players right now. We're hopeful we'll play. But I don't want to guarantee him that because there's no way that I know that."

Phil Jackson says the prospect of an NBA lockout influenced his decision to retire from coaching after this season rather than after last season.

Jackson told FOXSports.com that he wanted to leave the Los Angeles Lakers after the 2010 playoffs but agreed to stay another year when Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss spelled out the labor situation.

"I went out to lunch during the Phoenix series (Western Conference finals) last year and (Buss) told me, 'With the impending labor disagreement coming up, there are some things that we have to do as owners that make sense,'" Jackson recounted. "And I said, 'Well, I'm really thinking about retiring now but if there is going to be a lockout that would change the complexity. I would consider coming back and coaching another year to carry the team forward to that particular point.'

"Everyone has been talking about the labor disagreement lasting a whole year and I didn't want the organization to have to pay a salary for a coach doing nothing. The Lakers have been really good to me salary-wise but if I signed a two-year contract, then they'd have to pay me."

The NBA’s initial proposal for a new collective-bargaining deal called for a $45 million per team hard salary cap along with non-guaranteed player contracts and significant cuts in annual salary increases.

The details, spelled out in an April 26 memo issued by National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Billy Hunter, marks the league’s push for a major overhaul of the NBA’s economic model and emphasizes to players an aggressive bid to significantly slash costs and shorten contracts.

The memo was sent to all NBA players and was dated just days prior to the league delivering to the union a new labor proposal, which a source said still included the $45 million hard cap but added a phase-in of the cap over a few years. Union president Derek Fisher publicly dismissed the latest proposal as too similar to the original proposal.

The memo’s most eye-popping element is the league’s proposed $45 million hard cap, which cuts the current $58 million soft cap by nearly 25 percent.

The proposal from NBA owners that the NBA Players Association rejected last week called for the implementation of a hard salary cap at a figure lower than the league's current cap, but not until the 2013-14 season, according to sources familiar with the offer.

Sources told ESPN.com this week that the central change made by owners to past collective bargaining proposals called for easing in a more restrictive financial landscape over a three-season cycle as opposed to trying to impose a hard salary ceiling with immediate effect next season.

The league, sources said, regards this as a major concession, since the next two seasons would employ a salary-cap system with luxury-tax penalties not unlike the system currently in place.

The NBA, sources said, likewise hopes to implement even lower salaries for rookies than they currently make based off the league's rookie scale.

The NBA proposed to the players’ union last month a version of the “franchise tag” that it wants to include in the next collective bargaining agreement, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The tag, however, would be very different from the NFL’s version, which allows a team to essentially block one of its free agents from entering the market by binding him to his incumbent team with a one-year contract that carries a high salary based on various parameters.

The system the league has presented would not work this way, according to sources. Instead, a team would be allowed to designate one player for preferential contractual treatment, including more overall money, more guaranteed money and at least one extra year on his contract. A player would have to agree to such a designation. It is designed to work as an incentive to get a player to remain with his team rather than as a roadblock to free agency, the sources said.

NBA commissioner David Stern and National Basketball Players Association executive director Billy Hunter have been meeting face-to-face to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, sources close to the talks told ESPN.com on Tuesday.

The two sides met last week in Chicago and talks will resume this week in New York, according to sources.

Staffers from both sides were present for the Chicago meetings.

Hunter and Stern negotiated deals in 1999 and 2005. In past negotiations between the two, face-to-face talks have not always led to significant progress, but there has never been big progress without such high-level meetings.

The league delivered the players an updated proposal last week, but the deal was declined.

"Unfortunately, the proposal is very similar to the proposal the league submitted over a year ago," union president Derek Fisher told ESPN.com's Chris Sheridan and Chris Broussard. "This last proposal doesn't look close to what we were expecting."

NBA owners claim they will lose an estimated $300 million this season, a figure described by NBA commissioner David Stern as not acceptable or sustainable.

“We’re not going to lose any money,” Stern said. “I’m not going to be commissioner of a league that is comfortable [losing money]. Because I don’t have a group of owners who find it acceptable for me to have that conversation with them.

“You don’t have $4 billion worth of revenue and pay out over $2 billion in salary and benefits to lose money. It’s something that we have sort of gotten used to as the revenues have gone up … but the world has changed about the prospect for all franchises, the world has changed for a lot of reasons – and economically – and now people who make investments in buildings and things expect not to lose money.”

Owners are seeking significant changes to the league's financial structure, including a hard salary cap and a drastic reduction in player salaries.

NBA players are not happy with the latest formal collective bargaining proposal from the league's owners, saying the new offer of a 10-year deal is only marginally different from the original one the owners made.

In their initial proposal, the owners sought a reduction of nearly $800 million in salaries for the 2011-12 season. Players were paid a total of approximately $2.1 billion this season, and commissioner David Stern said last month that the league is projecting a $300 million loss for the current season.

The union has disputed that number, saying a majority of those costs are attributable to depreciation, along with interest payments on loans used to finance the purchase of teams.

The owners' new proposal still seeks a similar financial cutback, though it would be phased in during the first two seasons.

"We are taking a close look at each piece of the proposal, and I along with my players and executive committee will be determining what next steps best move this process forward," Fisher said. "I continue to work on this daily, take this very seriously, and have a responsibility to my players to try and get a deal done."