National Basketball Players’ Association vice president Maurice Evans said players might be willing to relent on BRI, but do not intend to budge on a hard cap.

“In my opinion, the current deal we have now is actually working,” Evans said. “So if we can just work from there and try and figure out something that works for everybody… Again, we want to bargain with them. We don’t want to throw darts and say who is right and who is wrong. We just want to get a deal. There has to be some model that says this is how we do business and it’s consistent from here out. Tweak this, and work from there. Honestly, I don’t think there is anything more we can give and a hard cap is definitely not going to happen.”

The owners are also expected to push for reducing the length of guaranteed contracts, and limiting the guarantees on some deals, which Evans felt is unnecessary. “I don’t think there is nowhere to go from here,” he said. “Everything has gone down. We can’t continue to diminish the years of contracts. GMs and owners don’t have to sign players for those allotted number of years. We don’t need to self-govern them. Doesn’t make any sense.”

The threat of an NBA lockout reaches beyond 30 teams.

National teams competing in important Olympic qualifying tournaments this summer could be affected, too.

The collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association expires July 1, and if a deal is not reached before then or shortly after, national teams are concerned they won't be able to obtain affordable insurance on players' NBA contracts.

NBA player contracts are insured in case of injury, guaranteeing a player will be paid if he is injured. In general, it's a 41-game deductible, giving teams some relief.

The insurance for NBA players in international events under normal circumstances — use last summer's world championships in Turkey with several NBA players as an example — works like this: The NBA's insurance company covers the player's contract, and the player knows he will be paid his NBA salary if he is injured. The national team pays an additional insurance premium to cover career-ending injuries in international play, but since career-ending injuries are rare, the cost is nominal.

The situation changes drastically in an NBA lockout. Players' contracts are suspended in a lockout thus there is technically no contract to insure during that period.

NBA commissioner David Stern acknowledges the tremendous success the league is enjoying this season. He estimates that gross revenues will surpass $4 billion.

That said, Stern says that the game's financial structure must change.

"We are still likely to lose collectively somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 million, which is lower than $370 million of a few years ago and $340 [million] last year," Stern said. "But we still remain very much intent on having a system that actually allows us to both have a sustainable business model."

The NBA's collective bargaining agreement with its players expires June 30 at 11:59 p.m.

The NBA is projecting a loss of $300 million for the 10-11 season, which is lower than the $370 million the league lost two seasons ago and $340 in 09-10.

NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver added that about 22 of the league’s 30 franchises are expected to lose money this season.

“Business has improved, nothing to be proud of, but we’ve reduced losses,” Silver said at the news conference. “We don’t believe, within this current system, we have the ability to move dramatically much more.”

Dan Wasserman, a spokesman for the players’ union, said in a telephone interview that he was unable to immediately respond to the NBA’s comments because union Executive Director Billy Hunter was sick and unavailable.

The current CBA was agreed upon in 2005.

“We didn’t anticipate cost expenses to rise as quickly as they have in virtually every area of our business, and we didn’t anticipate that the world would change in essence,” Silver told reporters after the news conference. “There’s been a sea change in the global economy since we negotiated our last deal.”

The NBA plans to submit a revised proposal on a new collective bargaining agreement to the players' union within the next few weeks, according to commissioner David Stern.

Neither Stern nor deputy commissioner Adam Silver would offer details of what would be in their proposal to replace the current CBA, which expires June 30.

Fears of a lockout are "beginning to have an impact on our business," said Silver.

The NBA has fined Phil Jackson $75,000 for making unauthorized public comments about collective bargaining, according to sources close to the situation.

The Lakers also separately were fined $75,000, sources said.

Jackson talked about the potential lockout as a reason for his retirement.

"It was really about the fact that there's going to be a lockout," Jackson told the small gathering of traveling beat reporters April 7 at a Portland hotel. "It's the perfect time to help the organization cover a gap if there's a lockout. My staff, all those guys who work with me. All those things played into it. I felt like an obligation."

"Who knows what the NBA is going to look like next year?" Jackson continued. "It's going to take on a whole different proportion. How long is it going to last? I think there are some people who are pretty convinced there's not going to be a year next year."

The NBA has cancelled its annual Las Vegas summer league, according to the Daily News’ Mitch Lawrence.

The Las Vegas summer league normally starts around July 9, with upwards of 20 teams, including the Knicks, sending little-used veteran players and rookies to compete over a 10-day period.

In preparing for a lockout, the NBA is also not sending any teams abroad for training camp, and did not schedule any preseason games in Europe for this fall.

Quite a few things are going to come up in the NBA’s next collective bargaining agreement:  revenue sharing, length of contracts, and the salary cap, to name a few.

With the owners and players association likely to trade concessions, several high-ranking NBA team executives told Yahoo! Sports’ Marc J. Spears they wouldn’t be surprised if the age limit in the new CBA is pushed to two years in college and 20 years old by the end of that calendar year.

One NBA general manager says about two-thirds of teams are in favor of that change.

Austin Rivers, a Duke-bound shooting guard, says he is in no rush to leave for the NBA, but is disappointed about potentially losing the opportunity to make a choice.

“I don’t think it’s fair to a lot of guys who are ready to go,” Rivers said Thursday after practice at the Nike Hoop Summit. “We’re going to have guys in our class that are going to be ready to play after one year. There are certain people that are able to make that jump and you’re trying to tell them they can’t make that jump and they have to wait another year, risk another injury or something like that? At the end of the day it should be up to the player. It’s his life. It’s his choice.”

The National Basketball Referee’s Association has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board contending that the NBA has violated federal laws by engaging in unfair labor practices.

The charges revolve around what the referees' union describes as “the league’s refusal to negotiate with the union concerning non-economic issues.”

The league’s collective bargaining agreement with its referees expires Sept. 1.

The union has met three times with the NBA, most recently on March 31.  It contends that the NBA hasn’t responded to any of its proposals.