The NBA owners and players failed to make any significant progress during Tuesday’s four-hour negotiating session, which resulted in the cancellation of the entire preseason.

Regular season games are next.

Commissioner David Stern and deputy commissioner Adam Silver told reporters that if no new labor agreement is reached by Monday, Oct. 10, that the first two weeks of the regular season would be gone, too. The problem there is no future meetings are scheduled to discuss ending the three-month lockout.

"We were not able to make the progress that we hoped we could make and we were not able to continue the negotiations," Stern said.

It really does seem that Stern and the owners are attempting to play hardball with the players. According to an ESPN.com report, the players had agreed to accept 53 percent of the league revenue, which would have given the owners back roughly $1 billion over six years.

The owners countered with asking the players to accept just 47 percent of the revenue, which is only a one percent jump from what they were most recently seeking. The players received 57 percent of the NBA revenue under the last contract.

You would think a 50–50 split would get the deal done, but it doesn’t seem that that works for the players, who reporting rejected such a revenue divide. Following Tuesday’s meeting, the mood was somber as the reality that  regular season games will be missed and that perhaps the entire 2011–12 season could be lost.

"Today was not the day to get this done,” NBA Players Association president Derek Fisher said. “We were not able to get close enough to close the gap.”

Contact Terrance Harris at terrancefharris@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @Terranceharris

(Photo: Patrick McDermott/GettyImages)