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Silver confident league will avoid lockout 'based on tone' of talks with NBPA

Jerry Lai / USA TODAY Sports

With both the NBA and its players' association holding opt-out clauses that must be exercised by Dec. 15, it's all but inevitable that the 2016-17 season will be the league's last under its current collective bargaining agreement. However, unlike the last time a new deal had to be worked out, commissioner Adam Silver doesn't expect this round of negotiations to necessitate a work stoppage.

Silver says the league and the union have been having substantive discussions, and that the positive, respectful tenor of those discussions has him optimistic about a new CBA being worked out before the opt-out deadline.

"While we and the union have agreed that we're not going to talk publicly about the substance of our discussions, neither side has made it a secret that we're talking and that the goal is, of course, to avoid any type of work stoppage whatsoever," Silver told Bloomberg's Ira Boudway. "I feel fairly confident that, based on the tone of these discussions thus far, based on the sense of trust and the amount of respect among the parties, that we should be able to avoid any kind of public labor issue and that the things we need to get done will get done behind closed doors."

Silver has been sounding this horn for a while, and in March even called his outlook "extraordinarily optimistic." NBPA executive director Michele Roberts has been somewhat more guarded in her public statements, but she expressed her own optimism earlier this week. That said, there will still be a few hairy issues to sort out, including Roberts' outspoken opposition to capping player salaries.

"The communication is very direct between Michele and me," Silver said. "As a still relatively new head of the union, I think she is establishing herself, and it’s not for me to say what she should be saying publicly or otherwise. What I care most about is what is said across the bargaining table."

One positive sign is that Silver appears willing to cede ground on at least one issue that he and Roberts have long disagreed on: the league's age minimum.

"It's still something I care a lot about. I'm also a realist," Silver said. "Given that Michele has said her preference would be for an 18-year-old minimum age, my sense is that it's not something that's going to change in the short term. And by the way, I've always said I understand the other side of the issue, about a young man's opportunity to make a living. But my view has always been that we'd be a better league if players came into the draft at 20 instead of 19."

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