David Aldridge tweets that the resumption of talks between the NBA and players is to discuss a settlement of the players' antitrust lawsuit and does not include labor negotiations.
While technically and legally true on its face, and while the lawyers certainly couldn't ratify a new collective bargaining agreement on behalf of their clients, Aldridge is making a distinction that holds little substantive difference in actual practice.
No settlement negotiations are admissible as evidence at trial. That gives the lawyers wide leeway to discuss items that would lead to a final resolution between both sides. In this case, those items could include the remaining CBA items that separate the parties.
A scenario in which a settlement agreement is reached by the lawyers, only to see the two sides become bogged down again on the major CBA terms, would strain reason.
The catch is that the lawyers would not acknowledge any of this for public consumption -- since the NBA could, for example, attempt to use such a disclosure as evidence that the union's disclaimer of interest is a sham intended only as a bargaining tactic.
It is important to note that there could be a tangible settlement of the lawsuit itself -- a nod to the legal distinction between settlement negotiations and collective bargaining -- but any resolution would almost certainly be rolled into an agreement between the parties on the main features of the new CBA. There is nothing improper about this kind of process.
A discussion of the so-called B-list items could be pushed to the formal bargaining process that would follow once an agreement in principle is in place and the union resumes its role as the representative of the players.