David Stern: ‘I despair’

David Stern was on WFAN with Mike Francesca this afternoon and he laid it on heavy, smearing Billy Hunter, talking doom and gloom and even awkwardly saying “I despair” when asked if there was no deal by next week.

“If we don’t make it on Tuesday,” Stern says, “my gut is that we won’t be playing on Christmas Day.”

Awesome.

“Each side is going to meet with the mediator on Monday, and if there’s a breakthrough, it’s going to come on Tuesday,” Stern told NBA.com. “And if not, I think that the season is really going to potentially escape from us, because we aren’t making any progress … how many times does it pay to keep meeting, and to have the same things thrown back at you? We’re ready to sit down and make a deal. I don’t believe that the union is. Hopefully by Tuesday, aided by the mediator, they’ll be ready to make a deal. Certainly I’ll bring my owners ready to make a deal.”

Basically, from what I understand, a federal mediator is in place to just tell each side if they’re full of it or not. Right now the sides are completely hung up thinking that their deal is fair. The players see their 53 percent BRI take as fair. The owners don’t see any deal where they still lose money as fair.

So a mediator will step in, hear it all out and inform each side whether or not their proposal is total junk or not. Hopefully that’s a good thing.