NBA impasse headed to mediation

The NBA and its locked-out players will take their contract dispute to a federal mediator as they try to resolve differences that have already cost the first two weeks of the season. George Cohen, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), announced Wednesday that he will oversee negotiations between the NBA and the NBA Players Association, beginning next Tuesday in New York. Cohen, who tried to resolve the NFL's labor dispute months before it eventually ended, said he had been in contact with representatives on both sides of the basketball talks "for a number of months". "I have participated in separate, informal, off-the-record discussions with the principals representing the NBA and the NBPA concerning the status of their collective bargaining negotiations," Cohen said in a statement issued by the Washington-based FMCS. "It is evident that the ongoing dispute will result in a serious impact, not only upon the parties directly involved, but also, of major concern, on interstate commerce -- i.e., the employers and working men and women who provide services related to the basketball games, and, more generally, on the economy of every city in which those games are scheduled to be played." Negotiations between NBA owners and players stalled on Monday, and the league announced it was calling off the first two weeks of its regular season, which had been scheduled to start on November 1. Pre-season games had already been wiped out. Stumbling blocks in the talks have been a salary cap system -- with owners favoring a hard cap without the current loop-holes available -- and the division of revenues. Cohen oversaw talks between NFL owners and players for 16 days in February and March that didn't yield an agreement. When that mediation broke off on March 11, the union disbanded, players sued owners in federal court, and the league locked out players. Talks later resumed under a different, court-appointed mediator and a new NFL collective contract was reached in August.