The Detroit Pistons are one of 30 teams awaiting the end of the NBA lockout as negotiations continue to grow more and more complex. The next deadline on this season happening sooner rather than later comes on Wednesday as commissioner David Stern has said the deal will get worse after that.
Stern has implied that would happen a few times already during the lockout, but the face of the current NBA went on SportsCenter late Monday afternoon to get his message out to a wider array of people. Mike Prada of Bullets Forever transcribed the commissioner's comments.
On the deadline: "We think there's a great offer on table, and we told the players, 'It's getting late.' The only rational thing is to make that deal because given what is going on in our business and our industry, it will get worse from there. We told the players ... an offer of 47% will become operative w/ hard cap in effect [if they don't accept]."
Stern's appearance on ESPN probably doesn't mean a whole lot, but his message probably did reach a wider audience -- including, probably, some of the players not heavily involved in the negotiations just waiting to report to training camp.