"Should we get empanadas for lunch? Let's take a break and discuss it again next week."

NBA owners, players and league executives are meeting again today for the fourth time in a week, as someone finally brought in a dictionary and pointed to the word “urgent.” NBA Commissioner David Stern has previously denied that there’s a standing deadline of Sept. 15 to resolve the lockout or else the preseason will be eliminated, which some owners apparently want. Deadline or not, it is widely believed that if progress isn’t made today, well then it’s sayonara, meaningless games.

Over the weekend, it was reported that NBA Players Union President and Los Angeles Lakers guard Derek Fisher had texted players and told them to be prepared for the season to begin as scheduled. Yesterday, Fisher denied telling anyone to keep training and be in shape in the most convincing way imaginable – he logged on to Twitter.

While the reports of my texts are false, I will say that I have & will continue to urge our players to stay ready for a season.

Ah OK, you didn’t text anyone to stay in shape, but you’ll go ahead and remind them while you’re on the ol’ Tweet-o-verse. That’s a lot like saying that you didn’t sleep with my sister but you sure have had a good time having sex with her.

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"This is nice, we should do this again."

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but there isn’t going to be a NBA season this year. The NBA owners locked out the players on July 1, and as those two months have passed, the owners, David Stern and the players’ union have met just two times. It’s important to note that they promised to meet three times in August, but they instead played a nice round of “It’s their fault.” But they all finally met for a whopping six hours yesterday, and I am pleased to report that this thing is still a big f*cking joke.

Players union executive director Billy Hunter delivered the season’s poor prognosis to the New York Daily News, and at this point it’s like all sides could give two Hershey squirts if the season happens or not. Let’s send it over to the BS cliché bad news quote machine:

“We haven’t had a breakthrough yet. We both realize that we need to continue to sit down and meet and talk to get the kind of breakthrough… to make a deal. We have to get that breakthrough, somehow.”

I’d make a smartass comment here about Hunter being promoted to Captain Obvious, but I have a feeling he’s going to follow this quote up with something so much more remarkably stupid.

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It’s been a few days since we last checked in on the NBA Lockout, so why don’t we take a look at the progress being made… haha, made you look, stupid. There’s no progress being made, which is spectacular for the NBA’s incredible momentum from this year’s Finals. Mainly because that momentum is dead. The casual fan’s death rattle is sounding like a feeding bell at the Kardashian manor, and now the owners, league officials and players are all acting like children fighting over a toy.

Those of us who still give a crap what these guys do, let’s all say it together – there’s not going to be a season. Very well done, friends. Now how about a little rundown?

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Well it’s official. As of 12:01 AM ET, the NBA is locked out. We knew it was coming so there was no shocking revelation, but it’s still a pretty empty feeling for fans when they realize that their favorite athletes aren’t going to be suiting up anytime soon. Especially NBA players since this lockout just looks so damn bad. Take the above image, for example. That was NBA.com at 12:02 last night, a clear sign to fans and players that the league means only business. Of course the site is almost back to a normal template, as opposed to “Baby’s First Blog”, but at the very least it was a brief message to everybody to get comfortable, because this thing isn’t going anywhere.

I woke up to an email from the Orlando Magic this morning, thanking me for being a season ticket holder and assuring me that they’re doing everything within their power to end this lockout soon. As I read it, all I could picture was Gilbert Arenas planking on a gigantic pile of money and Dwight Howard doing backflips off of jet skis. And, of course, the Magic charged me for my tickets today, so that was a good feeling. But as a fan of the game, this just sucks. For some reason I’m bothered by this lockout considerably more than the NFL lockout, and I think that it’s because I know that the NFL will get its sh*t together very soon and start operating business as usual. The NBA, though, is in some deep, deep crap. Like I wrote yesterday, the players and owners are $7 billion apart on a new CBA. Does anyone really think that Players Association President Derek Fisher and the NBAPA are going to roll over and give up the anchor-esque mid-level and max contracts that got us to where we are today? Hell no. So buckle up, friends. This thing is gonna get nasty.

In the meantime, as I love to do, I perused the Twitterverse to check up on some of the NBA’s bigger names and… well, there wasn’t as much chatter as I expected. But I pulled some of the better responses to the lockout from last night and this morning in case you missed it.

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With LA winning Game 4 in overtime last night, one can reasonably assume that the Magic are effed. LA needs only to win one of their next three now, and Orlando currently offers no argument to suggest that this series will even get back to LA. Dwight Howard and his 7 turnovers seem unable to produce the breakout game needed to give Orlando a chance. But I guess we should talk about Derek Fisher now.

Fisher forced overtime with a 3-pointer with 4.6 seconds left in regulation and then drilled another with 31.3 seconds to go in overtime as the Los Angeles Lakers outlasted the Orlando Magic 99-91 in Game 4 on Thursday night to open a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals.[...]

“It ranks right up there at the top,” he said. “You know, even greater than 0.4 because I feel like we’re as close as possible to what our end goal is.”

The end goal? Taking Kobe on that Thailand vacation he’s always wanted. They probably won’t be doing too much there. Just hanging out.