The owners got the better of the deal in 1999. They got maximum salaries and the rookie pay scale. They tried to get rid of Bird rights, but luckily that never happened. The players got a raise of the minimum salary and the BLE and MLE.

I have no idea how/if it would have turned out if the players didn't hold out for half the season. Probably wouldn't be any Bird rights.

The owners got the better of the deal in 1999. They got maximum salaries and the rookie pay scale. They tried to get rid of Bird rights, but luckily that never happened. The players got a raise of the minimum salary and the BLE and MLE.

I have no idea how/if it would have turned out if the players didn't hold out for half the season. Probably wouldn't be any Bird rights.

One of the agents known to have pushed for that strategy, Mark Bartelstein, echoed the sentiments of players and union officials alike as he looked back on the day the season got shorter. He took great exception to how commissioner David Stern characterized the recent bargaining session on Monday in New York.

"You look at these press conferences, and you're thinking, 'Are you kidding me?' " Bartelstein told SI.com of Stern. "He's the master of spinning a story so as not to tell the entire story or give you a real picture of what he's trying to accomplish.

"I think the owners' strategy all along was to play a game of chicken with the players and see who would blink first. But I would have more respect if they just said, 'We think we're going to be able to jam a horrible deal down the players' throats, and that's what we're going for,' instead of trying to act like you're worried about all these other things that you're not worried about."

There has never been a clearer picture of who the true villain is when it comes to this NBA lockout.

After extended meetings Sunday and Monday, which only appeared to separate the two parties even further and result in the cancellation of two weeks of the regular season, it’s now terribly obvious just how much manipulating is being done here by the NBA’s commissioner and owners.

When you parse the particulars of the bargaining process, a prolonged stoppage just makes no sense. The players have already offered significant concessions to help change a system that needs changing. Teams may have lost money under the current system, but the players have recognized that, and have offered to sacrifice $160 million dollars per season. Asking the players to shoulder any more responsibility for the NBA's losses is insulting.

If NBA owners are "at bottom running a business", then they should act like businessmen and take responsibility for their inexplicable business decisions that brought the NBA to this point. If these are truly serious businessmen, they should recognize the hidden and explicit value to owning a piece of a league that's grown steadily for 60 years. Instead, the players are supposed to guarantee them profit opportunities every single year. Who's being greedy and ungrateful?

As an NBA fan I want this lockout to end. That said, when I hear David Stern talk, I can’t help but feel more upset at the fact that I am being lied to and the wrong people are being blamed. Instead of locking out the players perhaps the owners should have locked themselves out and hired a new commissioner.

Here's one explanation of why the players rejected that 50/50 offer: Perhaps they never made it.

Union vice president and Spurs forward Matt Bonner says "Kessler definitely didn't offer 50/50. There's no way."

Bonner points out that it had been a "huge ordeal" to persuade players to agree to take only 53 percent, after a dozen years of earning 57. "That was a huge point of contention. Talking to all these veterans and All-Stars, they were upset we went down to 53. We had to sell them on that. I'm pretty certain Kessler didn't have the authority to offer 50, and nobody in the room would have agreed to that."

Another union official allows Kessler may have said something in the weeks prior that could have been misunderstood as offering 50, but "it's patently false," he says, that Kessler made anything like a proposal. "There's a lot of discussion back and forth that takes place, particularly in the small group meetings. It's a complete mischaracterization to say that whatever happened constituted any kind of formal proposal at that point."

In either case, nothing here can be considered remotely good news for basketball fans. The moment when it seemed like negotiators may have been all together at the same number was the most optimistic of the entire process. That it may have always been a misunderstanding, or more importantly that owners seem to genuinely have no interest in going higher than 50, and players genuinely no interest in going below 53, makes this look bad -- before even touching the thorny issues of the luxury tax, raises and cap exceptions.

Stern said Friday that he's not sure whether he can even get his owners to go for 50 anymore. Meanwhile, I asked Bonner if he thought the owners would to higher than 50, and he said "I hope so, for the sake of the season."

Now it's no longer a story of what Hunter and Stern may be able to hash out in a hotel. Now it's about big groups of owners and players, all across the globe, who are not close to seeing eye-to-eye, but do have final say.

Innocent question based in my ignorance. Why don't you delete and or block these spammers making accounts and posting crap?