NBA players and club owners met for a second consecutive day in talks about the ongoing lockout, the first time since the shutdown began July 1 the sides have met face-to-face on back-to-back days. After meeting only twice in two months, club owners and players met Wednesday and Thursday for 5 1/2 hours each day and plan to resume talks Tuesday in larger groups. “It's a good idea to have larger group meetings at this point,” NBA commissioner David Stern said, adding that it is nearing “an important time” in negotiations. Thursday marked the 70th day of the lockout, which has jeopardized the playing of all or some of the upcoming 2011-12 campaign. Training camps are set to open Oct. 3 with exhibition games a week later and the regular season set to start Nov. 1. League and union leaders plan to inform their constituencies next Thursday of how talks are progressing, leaving about two weeks to achieve a deal to conduct next month's run-up to the season as scheduled. Club owners seek a firm salary cap to limit expenses and ends to contract guarantees while players want to hold the line on current payrolls despite claims by the owners that 22 of 30 teams are losing money. The decision to expand the talks is not an indication that a deal is near, Stern said, but a nod to the calendar. With training camps set to open Oct. 3, the talks will need to accelerate to avoid the cancellation of preseason games. Any eventual deal will require participation from the full committees. “It doesn't imply that somehow we're on the verge,” Derek Fisher, the president of the National Basketball Players Association, said, referring to the larger meeting.
