David Stern has used strong language to describe the urgency in the NBA's labor talks (Joe Burbank, Orlando Sentinel)

For a moment, let’s take as gospel the ESPN.com report that NBA Commissioner David Stern plans to threaten players with the cancellation of the entire 2011-12 season if the sides haven’t made major progress toward a deal by the end of the weekend. 

If Stern actually makes that threat, here’s what Billy Hunter and Derek Fisher should do. 

They should laugh in Stern’s face. 

Such a threat by Stern — something one of the NBA’s chief spokesmen flatly denies is in the offing — would have to be a negotiating ploy, pure and simple. 

The NBA would face a backlash of untold proportions if Stern and league owners actually cancel the season before it was scheduled to begin. 

Fans would be furious. 

Arena and municipal officials across the country would cry foul. 

And how do you think the league’s business partners would react?

Don’t you think the businesspeople at ESPN and Turner — two companies that have invested millions of dollars in NBA television rights deals — would throw a fit? How about the companies that have invested tens of thousands of dollars in luxury suites at various arenas? 

Simply put, the league would destroy all the goodwill it has built up through the years, going back to the days when Dr. J, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird lifted the league out of obscurity in the early 1980s. 

That’s why I think Stern — and the 30 ownership groups he works for — would be crazy if they’d consider cancelling the entire season sometime in October. 

All that said, Stern was correct when he told reporters on Wednesday that there will be “enormous consequences at play” when the two negotiating groups meet over the next few days. 

That should be obvious to everyone. 

The league is nearing the point when it needs a deal in place in order for the regular season to begin as scheduled on Nov. 1. If there’s no deal by this time next week, the NBA probably would have to start cancelling regular-season games. 

Any loss of regular-season games would be a titanic public-relations disaster for the league. 

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: At a time when the national unemployment rate is 9.1 percent, at a time when people in all areas of this country are struggling just to provide for their families, people  won’t tolerate it if billionaire owners and millionaire players can’t agree to a collective bargaining agreement in time to save the entire regular season. 

Stern knows this. 

Hunter and Fisher know this. 

But they also know that a 70-game regular season would be less injurious to the league and its players than no season at all, that a 60-game regular season would be less harmful than no season at all and so on and so on. 

So the question is this: Just how much harm to the league and to their images are the league’s owners and the players’ union willing to accept? 

The rest of us simply don’t know the answer. 

For better or worse, we’ll learn that answer over the next week. 

Follow Josh Robbins on Twitter at @JoshuaBRobbins and e-mail him at jrobbins@orlandosentinel.com. Subscribe to our Orlando Magic newsletter at OrlandoSentinel.com/joinus.

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