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		NBA: Talks continue between players and owners By Joseph Hawkes-Beamon November 10, 2011

	New York – Thursday’s labor talks between the players and the owners began shortly before 1 p.m. ET. The two sides met for more than six hours, working to try to find a way to save the 2011-12 NBA season. Officials from both sides spoke unpretentiously about what was achieved during a session that lasted 12 hours in total and cautioned against getting swept up in the latest wave of optimism around the league that a deal to finally end the 133-day lockout is near. "There was enough give and take on both sides to merit us both coming back tomorrow," union executive director Billy Hunter said late Wednesday. The union was hoping for more after Hunter and union president Derek Fisher, for the first time since the lockout began, were authorized Tuesday by player reps from 29 of the league's 30 teams to accept a 50/50 split in annual Basketball Related Income if they could secure concessions from the league on the five or so remaining "system" issues that have kept the sides from striking a deal. The various restrictions and penalties that owners continue to insist on to regulate teams that stray into luxury-tax territory, sources say, are where the sides continue to snag. Sources have said one major hurdle that remains is the knowledge shared by both Hunter and NBA commissioner David Stern that the votes to approve any deal are likely to be closer than ever before in past labor battles, given the rival factions that have formed within both groups during the work stoppage. "We can't say that there was significant progress made today," Fisher said. Said Stern: "Nothing was worked out today. ... We're not failing and we're not succeeding. We're just there." Hunter himself acknowledged in a Tuesday night interview with NBA TV that a fast-moving decertification push -- fronted most notably Boston Celtics star Paul Pierce -- has "close to" 200 players in the process of signing a petition that would trigger a decertification vote. The movement, sources said, has grown to include more than the original seven agents (Mark Bartelstein, Bill Duffy, Dan Fegan, Leon Rose, Jeff Schwartz, Arn Tellem and Henry Thomas) who have been advocating decertification for months. "I think you'd be surprised how big it's gotten," said one source, who added that "the wheels are in motion" and that signatures are already "coming in pretty quickly." Should talks collapse again this week, sources say that players and agents at the forefront of a drive to dissolve the union through decertification will be ready to move forward with plans to file a petition with the National Labor Relations Board calling for a decertification vote. Decertification is a two-step process that requires 30 percent of the league's workforce -- an estimated 130 players -- to sign the petition calling for a vote. That petition is then forwarded to the NLRB, which would take up to 45 days to ratify the petition and arrange the vote, during which the union and league could continue to negotiate. Talks between the two sides are expected to resume at 12:00pm EDT Friday.