We can laugh because no one got hurt, but this has got to stop, people.

Per ESPN…

Fisher wrote: “Our game has never been more popular and we’re poised to see tremendous revenue growth over the next 5 to 6 years. … We must share fairly in the continued growth of our business. Any deal that decouples us from a fair share of the revenue growth in the years ahead is a deal we cannot accept. Period!”

Fisher said he still firmly believes that the NBA’s 30 teams do not share the same goals in the lockout — a point he made in a letter to the union’s membership last week.

“There are a number of team owners that will not lose the season over the hard cap system. We’ve been clear from Day 1 of this process that we cannot sign off on a deal that attempts in any way to include a hard salary cap for our teams. That has not changed,” Fisher said.

CBSSports.com reported earlier Monday that the league and the union have scheduled small group sessions for Tuesday and possibly Wednesday to continue talks. Numerous sources close to the situation have told ESPN.com that a deal must be struck by Oct. 15 at the latest to preserve the scheduled start of the regular season Nov. 1.

So it sounds like Fisher’s strategy is to hold firm and wait for the splinter amongst the owners to deepen. There is a subsection of the owners that wants a hard cap, while the rest aren’t willing to lose the season over the hard cap. The players believe that revenue sharing is the way to keep small markets competitive, yet the hard-liners can point to the NFL and to the Green Bay Packers and the New Orleans Saints as small market teams that have been able to thrive with a hard cap.

My issue with using revenue sharing as a way to keep small market teams competitive is that is has to be substantial enough to allow those small market owners to put the same (or similar) money into payroll as the big market teams. But that’s probably not going to happen. The hard cap guarantees that the teams can only pay so much on their players which means everyone is working with the same payroll.

The ball ricochets off of two or three players before finding the hands of Kevin Walter.

Brett Favre is returning to football. Sort of. He has agreed to provide color commentary for the Southern Miss/Rice game on October 1st.

“I’m excited to be back at Southern Miss with the Golden Eagles,” Favre said in a press release. “I’m not committing to a new career in broadcasting, but just wanted to support Southern Miss and check out the view from the press box. It should be fun and I hope the fans enjoy it.”

Favre, who started at quarterback for Southern Miss from 1987-1990, set several passing records at the school despite being recruited as a defensive back out of high school.

Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. If anything, this would indicate that Favre isn’t planning a comeback for at least a few weeks.

I think we can all rest easy and assume that Favre is done playing football. It would be interesting to hear him call a game, however. I wonder if they’ll get Jenn Sterger as the sideline reporter…

The latest round of negotiations ended on Thursday with no deal, and it’s going to cost the league at least part of the preseason.

The NBA is expected to announce Friday it will postpone the start of training camp and the opening slate of exhibition games after a negotiating session Thursday in New York between players union executive director Billy Hunter and commissioner David Stern ended without a labor agreement or progress toward one soon, league sources said.

Stern, according to one source, told Hunter in Thursday’s meeting the owners want to reduce the players’ cut of basketball-related revenue to a figure well below 50 percent. Under the previous agreement, which expired July 1, the players were guaranteed a minimum of 57 percent of basketball-related revenue would be spent on salaries.

The league offered players a 46 percent of basketball-related revenue, 11 percent less than they received in last deal and seven percent less than last proposal by players, a league source said. Owners agreed to try to come up with a mechanism to solve their issues without adding a hard salary cap before the next meeting, according to the source.

Stern acknowledged Thursday that “the calendar is not our friend” when it comes to keeping the NBA season intact.

Wow, 46 percent? I thought the two sides were at least in the same ballpark on the economics even if they couldn’t agree on which type of salary cap (hard or soft) to use.

Jason Terry is the player rep for the Dallas Mavericks and this is what he had to say about the current state of the labor negotiations:

Terry said Tuesday that his optimism earlier in the process that a new labor deal would get hammered out and his Mavericks would begin their title defense on time has dissipated.

“For me it’s tough,” Terry said. “Not only did we do something great and have been sitting back enjoying it, but training camp is right around the corner. But it’s not looking good for us to get things started on time. Right now, at this point where we’re at, both sides are still far apart.”

Terry said he has been told not to talk about specifics of the negotiations; however, reports suggest the owners’ stance for a hard cap appears to be a prime sticking point. Terry attended one of the first negotiating sessions in July. He has not participated in any meetings since, but he said he is constantly apprised of the situation so he can keep teammates updated.

“When you’re in there, as opposed to reading in the newspaper or watching on TV, you really get to see people’s reactions and really see how important this deal is, not only to the owners, but to the players and not only my era but to eras that we will leave behind,” Terry said. “It’s a lot of work that has to be done. It’s not anything that you can iron out in a day or two. This is a lengthy process and if you are not on the same page with the person you are negotiating with then it’s just going to make for a long negotiation.

“Because it’s getting down to the final minutes, we don’t want to rush into anything just to try to save the season. But, as we stand right now, the owners aren’t moving and we definitely are staying strong together as a union.”

Strap in, people. This looks like it’s going to be a long one.

Bayless gave Chris Bosh the nickname “Bosh Spice,” and Bosh came on “First Take” to talk to him about it.

Ken Berger updates the status of the NBA labor negotiations.

What ultimately led to a deal [in the NFL] was the same thing that will lead to one in the NBA: the calendar. With NFL training camps about to open, both sides decided that the time for posturing and suing each other was over and the time to actually negotiate a labor agreement was upon them.

Courts were never going to end the NFL lockout, and they’re not going to end the NBA’s, either.

[Billy] Hunter has signaled his willingness to move on the economics, perhaps as low as 52-53 percent — down from the players’ previous take of 57 percent — to get a deal. But on Tuesday in New York, he told the owners he wasn’t going to give them the money and the system they want to go with it. With an unknown number of owners hellbent on a hard salary cap — Fisher said Thursday he believes it’s actually less than half — Hunter is facing the most difficult fight of his 15-year tenure leading the players union.

But the tough position he finds himself in cannot be credited solely to the owners, the opponent. It is also attributable to the enemy within — the forces who insist on zigging while he zags — and the hundreds of players who remain silent while he and Fisher and an executive committee of journeymen stick up for them.

Berger laments that just 10% of the players showed up to the union meeting in Las Vegas and that the stars seem content to watch the negotiations from afar.

But back to the deal at hand — it seems that the players are willing to concede on the percentage they get, but won’t also give the owners the other thing they want — a hard cap.

If I had to guess, this is going to drag out into late this year and a deal will only get done when both sides decide it’s time to save the season.

For more on this week’s talk, check out Berger’s update.

Henry Abbott of TrueHoop has been covering the NBA labor negotiations. Here’s what happened on Tuesday:

The players say they were ready to make what they thought was a very meaningful economic offer to the owners. But before they did, they wanted to know that the soft cap would remain.

In response to that, the owners did what both sides have done many times, and left the bargaining table to confer among themselves. (At CBA meetings, both sides typically have “caucus rooms” for just this purpose.) The owners huddled for three hours before deciding they would not respond to the players’ offer. Meeting over.

Later, the careful Stern decided to share with the public that the 11 owners in the room were not unified on how to handle the players’ offer:

“As you might guess, I don’t know how many owners we had, but we had as many views … We were not unanimous in every aspect of it. But all of the owners were completely unified in the view that we needed a system that at the end of the day allowed 30 teams to compete. And we went back to the players and said that although we have some ideas, we’ve been talking to each other, agreeing, disagreeing, coming up with everything that we possibly could to see if there was still time to save the season, it actually didn’t make sense for us to respond to their non-negotiable demand that everything remain the same that it was, and that we’d be best off going back and reporting to our respective sides at the meetings we’d have on Thursday.”

On Thursday, after his meeting with the owners, this is what Stern had to say:

“It is the view of the board and the committee that an individual team salary cap, as opposed to a league-wide salary cap, is preferred and the better way to go. But as we told the union, and will continue to tell them, everything is negotiable.”

“The vast majority of owners are in favor of a hard cap system. Having said that, they have authorized the committee to be willing to negotiate on all points, and the committee is.”

“I get reports that the union is coming out of their meeting today unified. We think that’s a good thing. We would like to negotiate with a strong union capable of delivering a deal.”

“The clock is ticking, but it hasn’t struck midnight yet. We’ve got time to do what needs to be done, and we’d like to do it, actually.”

“There’s nothing scheduled right this minute because we’re traveling back to New York and I assume the union is traveling back to New York. But we’ll both be in New York starting [Friday] and it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some conversation that was going on.”

It sounds like there is a sense of urgency right now in an attempt to get the season started on time, but I wonder if that’s going to go away once/if everyone realizes that it isn’t going to happen.

If I had to guess, I’d still bet that we miss a month or two of the season, though it doesn’t seem like the two sides are as far apart as they once were.