Basketball Players Labor Relations

A look at the NBA lockout through Monday: * Games lost Monday: Five. * Total games missed: 423. * Total days of season missed: 63. * Earliest estimated date season can start: Feb. 1 * Negotiations: The owners on Monday rejected the union's final offer. Players will vote Wednesday in New York on the league's final offer.

Dancing on the high wire of Madness, trying not to look down into Folly and Oblivion. . . . It hasn't been such a happy new year for the NBA and its players, who spent the first days of 1999 staring into the abyss, sticking their toes in--and, yes, steeling themselves to take the plunge. Even as their differences narrowed until you had to squint to see them, they circled their wagons and issued their war cries. This stopped being a business deal months ago for at least some of these combatants.

We should know soon whether David Stern's threat was real, whether Michael Jordan will play again and whether it was worth it to push the NBA to the brink of calamity. With Thursday the deadline for reaching a new collective bargaining agreement, a look at a few of the most pressing questions in what will be one of the most pivotal weeks in NBA history. Question: They wouldn't cancel the rest of the season, would they? Answer: Yes, they would.

Union director Billy Hunter traveled back from Philadelphia on Saturday, and NBA Commissioner David Stern is due back from Aspen, Colo., today to begin one of the most pivotal weeks in the league's history. The league has set Thursday as the deadline for reaching a new collective bargaining agreement that will save the season, yet no new negotiating sessions have been scheduled. The union says it has another offer for the owners, but will not present it until the league agrees to a meeting.