The owners set a deadline for the Players' Association to accept their proposal by today, but they rejected that offer yesterday. Now they reportedly want to meet with the owners again today, hoping to make a deal before the owners lower their offer even further.

The meeting comes one day after the NBA players rejected the proposal Stern set forth, but said they would be willing to compromise on the Basketball-Related Income split in return for some concessions on the system. Those concessions include a larger mid-level exception even for luxury-tax paying teams, a less-stingy luxury tax penalty for teams who exceed the threshold consistently and the return of sign-and-trades for tax teams.

It seems like at this point the Owners have a pretty significant amount of leverage here. If they can convince the players to accept a 50-50 split, that would be a significant win for them. But if they are unwilling to accept the changes the players are looking for on system issues, we could be pretty far away from the conclusion of this lockout.