If you have been vacationing some where warm or you really don't care, the National Basketball Association has not played or for that matter, associated for the first half of the 1999 season.

Depending on who or what you believe, the bottom line is that the two sides could not reach an agreement on collective bargaining.

So what happens when you bring the ball to the playground and no one wants to play by your rules? You take your ball and leave, just like the owners did. The owners locked the players out. They said "if you don't like it, fine, don't play". The owners gave the players the choice to agree on what they want, or just not play.

The players on the other hand, wanted the owners to change their way of thinking and give in to "todays way" of doing things. They thought that they were collectively more important and powerful than the owners.

For days and weeks the two sides got together to try and hammer out their differences. Too often, the meetings were cut short, delayed and even cancelled. They just couldn't agree. Finally, they saw that they needed each other, so a mediator came in and worked on both sides until an agreement was reached (more so for the owners than the players). Now the NBA season is well under way and everyone is happy, so I think.