National Basketball Players Association

This is your commissioner talking: You can kiss this season goodbye. Opening a final round of posturing or signaling an actual hardening of positions, NBA Commissioner David Stern said he has been told by his nine-owner labor committee not to offer further concessions and doesn't intend to negotiate further.

Alex English, the Denver Nuggets' career scoring leader, announced his retirement as an active player Tuesday and said he would take a position with the National Basketball Players Assn. English, who played with the Nuggets for 10 seasons, was traded to the Dallas Mavericks in 1990 and played in Italy last season.

The NBA sounded its most ominous tone to date Thursday night when negotiations with the players' union broke off and Commissioner David Stern responded by saying, "We are resigned to the fact that there won't be a season." Such talk may be mere saber rattling because training camps aren't scheduled to begin for two months and season openers aren't for three months. But it does signal that the sides are polarized after a hint of optimism, all while the National Basketball Players Assn.

CUT OFF AT THE IMPASSE Disputes between players and management threaten the seasons of two premier U.S. pro sports enterprises The NFL is in full lockdown (or lockout) mode; the NBA might follow suit once the Finals are done and its labor agreement expires. Players and team owners in both sports say publicly they want an agreement, but the reality is any accord in either sport may be quite a way down the road. No one has indicated much willingness to give on major talking points, which could mean that for the first time, two major sports could be shut down by labor discord at the same time.

The NBA lockout isn't ending any too soon for trading card merchants, who have already lost an estimated $30 million as a result of the standoff between basketball players and owners, according to one industry source. During the dispute, many fans seem to have staged a little strike of their own, refusing to buy basketball-related products. The pain has radiated throughout an industry that is propped up by small businesses, including many that were already struggling.

More than 200 NBA players who recently earned an average of more than $2.5 million, making them the unlikeliest workers in the history of organized labor, gathered, appropriately enough, in glitzy Caesars Palace in a stirring demonstration--to themselves, at least--their union really does exist.

If Billy Hunter hadn't guessed what representing the affluent and alienated would entail, he found out last fall at a news conference in Oakland on behalf of hard-core misfit Latrell Sprewell. Also attending was Spree's entourage, including celebrity legal advisor Johnnie Cochran, who turned out to have little connection to the case but did set off alarms in the NBA offices.

The surprise-o-meter went tilt last week. Even the rats, among Boston Garden's most durable tenants, couldn't have been ready for this one. Larry Bird a cancer to the Celtics? Selfish? Boston barely made the playoffs when he was out most of 1988-89. With Bird this season, the team is back to respectability--14-11 heading into tonight's game against the Clippers at the Sports Arena--but he is taking too many shots?