NBA owners, players reach tentative agreement

You can file this away among things I couldn't care less about but you readers might be interested in. The NBA owners and players have reached a tentative agreement and are saying that the league will start playing on Christmas Day. (Of course, that means they'll be getting 30 days to prepare for a 66 games season...) Most folks are acting as though the season is definitely on, but the way the information is written, right now we have a handshake deal and both sides still have to ratify it. The way this thing has gone for 149 days, I'd have to imagine there's still a pretty good chance that one of the sides backs off. One of the biggest issues is that the Players Union has to get a simple majority to pass the new agreement. Of course, the players dissolved their union in November and have an anti-trust lawsuit going against the owners. They'll have to drop the suit and re-form their union before they can vote to ratify. This is another thing that could go horribly wrong before it goes right. They still haven't agreed on things like drug testing. The more I read about this, the more I wonder how folks can be going about saying this lockout is over. I understand they cleared the first major hurdle, but it sure sounds like a lot of things still need to be decided and there's still a lot of roadblocks and potential hazards in the way. Apparently the aforementioned anti-trust lawsuit was the biggest deciding factor here - it really pushed negotiations along when it was decided that if a court ruled the owners locking out the players was illegal, the players would be owed $6 billion. There's a bargaining chip for you...