When Billy Hunter says that "collective bargaining has completely broken down" it's easy to believe.

The union is lawyering up. The league is lawyering up. The players will not be shoved around and are willing to walk away from vast piles of cash to prove it.

David Stern has an enormous collection of scary phrases at his disposal, and he rummaged through them to come up with "the nuclear winter of the NBA."

The idea of these two parties sharing a conference table and ironing out their difference seems foreign.

But that's precisely what will happen and here's why: