NBA owners and players met today for approximately 5 1/2 hours and plan to meet up tomorrow as well. If negotiations go well tomorrow, both sides could potentially meet up on Friday also. This is fairly good news for all NBA fans because both sides have barely met up since the lockout started July 1st. Before today’s meeting, they have only met twice since then. There must be some sort of progress being made because otherwise, the players and owners would not want to meet up again the next day.

Both sides are being pretty quiet on how the discussions are going though, so there wasn’t a strong sense of optimism. Derek Fisher of the Los Angeles Lakers, the players’ union president, is suggesting that both sides want to keep all negotiations private. He said, “…to characterize what comes out of the meetings and whether we’re making progress or we have momentum, we can’t say and it’s tough to say. Until the deal is done, there is no deal.”

There is a sense of urgency now to get a new agreement completed because training camps would be starting around October 3rd. Preseason would then begin around October 9th and the regular season would begin around November 1st. Many fans have believed that there will be a work stoppage and, therefore, games will be lost and potentially there will be no season at all. Originally, many representives on both sides agreed with this because of how poorly the discussions were going. However, now that there’s a stronger sense of urgency, there’s a little more optimism, even if it’s not being shown. Derek Fisher said, “Time is running down, not necessarily out, but I think we all feel in the room that if we continue to work at it we can possibly find a way to get a deal done.” Hopefully, we’ll know more tomorrow on how much progress has been made in these meetings.