NEW YORK -- NBA union chief Billy Hunter said Thursday afternoon that NBA owners are locking out the players after failing to reach a new collective bargaining agreement.
"It's obvious the lockout will happen tonight," he said.
With this latest action, two of four major professional sports in the United States are locked out. The NFL locked out its players in March, and the two sides have been in discussions this week, trying to work toward a new deal.
Despite a three-hour meeting Thursday, the NBA and its players could not close the enormous gap that remained in their positions. The CBA is expected to expire at midnight.
Hunter said the union made a "moderate" new financial proposal, but it wasn't enough to keep the two sides at the bargaining table.
"The gap is too great," Hunter said.
Hunter said the two sides plan to meet again in the next two to three weeks.
"The negotiations ended without a resolution. The NBA informed us they are making a recommendation to their labor relations committee to start a lockout at midnight," union outside counsel Jeffrey Kessler told ESPN's Kelly Naqi. "The players want to continue to play basketball and are very disappointed."
All league business is officially on hold, starting with the free agency period that would have opened Friday, and games eventually could be lost, too. The last lockout reduced the 1998-99 season to just a 50-game schedule, the only time the NBA missed games for a work stoppage.
"We tried to avoid the lockout; unfortunately, we couldn't reach a deal," union executive committee member Matt Bonner said.
The sides remained far apart on just about every major issue, from salaries to the salary cap, revenues to revenue sharing.
Players, who previously offered to reduce their salaries by $500 million over five years, considered the owners' proposal for a "flex" cap, where each team would be targeted to spend $62 million, a hard cap. Although the league said total player compensation would never dip below $2 billion over the life of its proposed 10-year deal, that would amount to a pay cut for the players, who were paid more than $2.1 billion this season in salaries and benefits.
Owners also wanted a reduction in the players' guarantee of 57 percent of basketball revenues.
ESPN senior NBA writer Chris Sheridan and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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