Report: NBA, NBPA plan to meet amid growing optimism that lockout will be avoided

The expectation of contentious rhetoric in advance of a potential work stoppage in 2017 may be dissipating. So, too, may be the likelihood of said work stoppage.

With both the league and players union holding the option to opt out of the collective bargaining agreement following the 2016-17 season, and with a bold new executive director of the NBPA in Michele Roberts, some agents had begun preparing as if a possible lockout (or strike) was on the horizon. But despite public disagreements over the financial health of the league, among other matters, commissioner Adam Silver has long maintained that pessimism was premature.

Earlier this week, Roberts revealed that she, too, is hopeful the sides can avoid a work stoppage. Roberts said her and Silver hoped to get a deal done before the end of the 2015-16 season, and the two sides are working to schedule a formal bargaining session soon, according to a report from Zach Lowe of Grantland.

As Roberts told Lowe in an email:

That is accurate. That is the goal. We did discuss that timeline, though it is not a deadline. It is more aptly described as an aspiration or goal.

Lowe reported further that while the league's robust new TV deal has to pay the league - and thus, owners - during a work stoppage, Roberts and Silver aren't the only ones signing a positive tune:

There is a rising tide of optimism among ownership sources, player agents, union officials, and other stakeholders that the league might avoid the once-assumed lockout of 2017.

Collective bargaining covers an enormous landscape of potential issues to be discussed and negotiated, and it's a reality that several teams have lost money in recent seasons. Lowe reports that the new, burgeoning salary cap reality could keep some teams in the red in the short-term, but that there are non-CBA means of dealing with that issue, and it shouldn't serve to understate the overall health of the league:

The owners could solve a lot of these issues by tweaking the way they share revenue among themselves, and a cadre of small- and mid-market teams are already quietly waging that battle. ...

And we haven’t even mentioned that any of these owners could sell now for prices that are three, four, five, and six times what they paid for their teams.

None of this provides any certainty that a new deal will be reached by season's end, or even that a work stoppage is no longer a possibility. But the shift in discourse from combative to sanguine is encouraging that lost games can be avoided in 2017.