Although it won't be official until 12:01 a.m. tomorrow, the NBA owners will lock out the players after failing to reach a new collective bargaining agreement on Thursday.
San Antonio's Matt Bonner, vice president of the NBA Players Association, said after the three-hour meeting that the players and owners "tried to avoid a lockout. Unfortunately we could not reach a deal."
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, Union chief Billy Hunter said that the players made a new proposal, but it did not work out in the end.
Hunter also said that "the gap is too great" and both sides plan to meet again in the next two to three weeks.
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Players, who previously offered to reduce their salaries by $500 million over five years, considered the owners' proposal for a "flex" cap, where each team would be targeted to spend $62 million, a hard cap. Although the league said total player compensation would never dip below $2 billion over the life of its proposed 10-year deal, that would amount to a pay cut for the players, who were paid more than $2.1 billion this season in salaries and benefits.
Commissioner David Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver were said to have ripped the union's new proposal after the meeting.
"I'm not scared, but I'm resigned to the potential damage to our league," Stern said.