The New York Times obtained a copy of the NBA's revised proposal to the union.

Based on a review of the proposal, Howard Beck finds that the NBA has made a number of modest improvements, since its previous offer, which would benefit the players.

But rumors -- on Twitter and even in traditional media -- have persisted, spreading misinformation about the NBA's latest proposal.

Beck writes that the new offer would not curtail players' Bird rights.  In fact, the league has agreed to increase the rate of annual raises for Bird contracts.

The league has not included any provision in the current offer which would allow teams to send certain players to the D-League.  That is on a list of secondary items to be negotiated at a later time.

Beck discovers one suspect provision:  "One of the N.B.A.’s new demands does leap out: a call for a 12 percent reduction in rookie and minimum-scale contracts, cutting them to 2007-8 levels."

The league's proposal would allow taxpaying teams to use a new exception to sign players to contracts of up to $3 million and three years, for every year of the new CBA, and to enter into sign-and-trades for the first two years of the new CBA.  Both these terms are improvements, but the importance placed on these two areas may be overstated anyway:  The new rules would have banned only four sign-and-trades and nine mid-level-exception contracts over the course of the entire history of the last CBA.

The players are guaranteed 50 percent of revenues, so any shortfall that results from system constraints would have to be made up to the players at the end of the season.

Deputy commissioner Adam Silver expressed "grave concern" about the lack of accurate information on the NBA's proposal.

“We believe that if the players are fully informed as to what is and is not in our proposal, they will agree that its terms are beneficial to them and represent a fair compromise,” Silver said Saturday.