Despite NBA commissioner David Stern saying last week that a failure to reach a deal on Tuesday would cause for more games to be canceled, the players and owners made enough progress to avoid such a move. Instead of making a move towards getting rid of more games, the two sides will meet again on Wednesday morning.
It's a good thing some sort of progress was made since they were negotiating with federal mediator George Cohen for more than 16 hours. The exact amount of progress is up for debate since both sides refused to speak with the media following a gag order imposed by Cohen.
A Yahoo! report claims "very little" progress was made, though it was enough for the owners to choose more negotiating with the players over their previously schedule Board of Governors meeting on Wednesday.
If things really were still hopeless, Stern no doubt would have had no problem coming out and tell the waiting reporters all about how the union continues to sit on their hands. After all, the owners have dominated the union throughout this lockout in the media and that isn't going to change any time soon.
The fact Stern convinced the owners to go back to the table on Wednesday and not cancel more games should be enough to bring at least the smallest bit of optimism into the labor discussion.