DALLAS: NBA team owners and players scheduled a negotiating session Thursday just hours before the expiration of their collective bargaining agreement and a possible shutdown of the league. A wide gap remains between players and management on financial issues and owners want a tighter salary cap system with fewer guaranteed contracts for less money, claiming 22 of 30 clubs are losing money. Players, who take 57 percent of revenues, are fighting to maintain what they have in what could become the NBA's first shutdown since the 1998-1999 season was shortened to only 50 games. “I sure would like to see us make a deal and not making a deal should give everybody apprehension because the way to continue our growth is to come up with a deal that makes our union, that keeps our union as the highest-priced union in the world, gives all of our teams the opportunity to make a profit and makes us a more competitive league,” NBA commissioner David Stern said. Team owners met Tuesday in Dallas without voting to authorize a lockout but the league's labor relations committee has the power to act and will decide a next move based upon talks on the deadline day. Stern and union counterparts have said talks could extend beyond Thursday's deadline if there is progress being made. Stern said the union asked for a Thursday meeting after knowing the owners would gather Tuesday. They spoke in general terms on the status of talks and revenue sharing but with no new union deal, there was little in the way of detail. “It's hard,” Stern said. “We discussed principles, ideas and the like, but it's hard to complete one without the other.” Nowitzki overwhelmed Dirk Nowitzki, the German playmaker who led the Dallas Mavericks to an NBA Finals victory, admitted he was “overwhelmed” by the response as he came back to his home city Tuesday. “This is the highlight of my career,” he said during the celebrations in his home city of Wuerzburg. The 33-year-old, voted the Most Valuable Player of the NBA championship series, made his first appearance in Germany 16 days after his team's triumph and was greeted by a crowd of 3,000 fans at the city's basketball stadium. “It's absolutely overwhelming what's going on here,” said the visibly moved Nowitzki upon returning to the Franconia city, 120km from Frankfurt am Main. “I had not expected this and I won't forget this day for the rest of my life.”
