As he announced that the NBA was cancelling two weeks of the season, commissioner David Stern made the surprising assertion that the share of basketball-related income is not a major obstacle to getting a deal done with the union.
Both Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver said the main impediments are contract length, the length of the collective bargaining agreement, the use of exceptions by taxpaying teams, tax levels and the frequency of the tax.
The union claims that these new luxury tax and exception usage provisions that the league is seeking would be the equivalent of a hard salary cap.