NBA tell teams replacement referees will be used as pact with officials falls through

The NBA has told teams they are going ahead with replacement referees, days after the league thought a deal had been reached with locked-out basketball officials. The league sent a memo informing teams they had "no expectation of concluding a timely labour contract." The memo follows the latest failure in negotiations. According to the memo, the sides had agreed in principle on a new two-year deal on Friday. But the National Basketball Referees Association (NBRA) rejected the NBA's proposal on Sunday. The memo alludes to the reversal, saying, "this is not the first time that commitments made by the NBRA's negotiators were not met." The NBA commissioner, David Stern, previously ended one of the bargaining sessions when the league felt the referees backed out of agreements that had been made on concessions. The NBA held a referees' training camp with replacements over the weekend. sports@thenational.ae