Stars play for charity as dispute threatens season

The 100th day of the NBA lockout yesterday brought no sign of a resolution that could preserve the scheduled start of the season as a weekend charity game in Miami gave fans a taste of what they could soon be missing.

Miami Heat star trio of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh – along with some of their buddies from around the league – played before a sell-out crowd of about 4,000 on a university campus.

“We want to show our fans it’s all for them,” Wade said.

“We’re happy we can bring some kind of basketball to the fans.”

Wade and James played on opposing teams, with Wade’s team winning 141-140 in overtime.

Several such games have been played in summer as the players, who were locked out when their last collective contract with the league expired, looked around for something to do.

“I think we’re all starved for basketball right now,” Bosh said.

“I was excited when we pulled up and we saw all these cars here and fans lined up. We felt great because people showed up.”

The good feelings could be well and truly gone today, however as NBA commissioner David Stern has warned the league will have to cancel the first two weeks of the regular season – scheduled to start on November 1 – if no deal has been reached.

“We would like not to lose the first two weeks but it doesn’t look good,” Stern said last week as he completed the cancellation of all 114 pre-season games.

Team owners and players have not been able to agree on how to divide $3.8 billion in annual revenues or on salary cap issues, with the gap so wide it could jeopardise the entire 2011-2012 campaign.

Stern noted that the cancellation of regular season games would likely harden the positions on both sides.

“When you start losing regular-season games on top of losses in the exhibition season, you have two parties that have been financially wounded,” he contended.