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New York. NBA Commissioner David Stern and other league representatives met with players on Friday in a post-Thanksgiving holiday bid to end the lockout and get a season under way by Christmas.

The two sides met quietly earlier this week, and resumed their talks on Friday with little time left to get games on court by Dec. 25, when Christmas traditionally provides a showcase for top NBA teams.

This season’s schedule for Dec. 25 features Miami at Dallas in a rematch of last season’s championship series won by the Mavericks over the LeBron James-led Heat, plus Boston at New York and Chicago at the Los Angeles Lakers.

Stern has said that it would likely take 30 days from the time the two sides reach a handshake agreement to when a season could actually begin.

Games scheduled from Nov. 1-Dec. 15 have already been cancelled as the two sides failed to resolve their labor dispute, but Friday’s talks raised hopes that things could yet get going in 2011.

Stern was joined in the talks for the NBA by deputy commissioner Adam Silver, San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt and lawyers Rick Buchanan and Dan Rube.

The players were represented by Derek Fisher, the Los Angeles Lakers player who served as president of the NBA Players Association.

Fisher, NBPA executive director Billy Hunter and vice president Maurice Evans were on hand despite the fact that players dissolved the association as a trade union, opting to launch an anti-trust lawsuit against the league after talks broke down earlier this month.

The league has also gone to court in a bid to prove the lockout is legal.

Friday’s talks were to deal with settlement of the legal cases, with hopes raised that any such settlement would also lead to resolution of the financial issues that prevented the two sides from agreeing on a new collective contract to replace the one that expired on July 1.

That was when NBA club owners, claiming $300 million in losses last season among 22 of the league’s 30 clubs, locked out the players.

Talks on how to divide some $4 billion in annual income never produced a deal, with owners demanding a 50-50 revenue split and players, who made 57 percent in the old deal, seeking 53 percent of basketball-related income.

The league said in a statement this week that it “remains in favor of a negotiated resolution.”

If the framework for a deal could be hammered out, the union could be revived in order for players to adopt a new deal.

In the only prior NBA season shortened in a money fight, each team played 50 games in the 1998-99 season, which did not start until February after a deal was reached in early January.

Agence France-Presse