So this is where we are on Day 112 of the NBA lockout that never seems to end. After three days and more than 30 hours of negotiations, the NBA and the union that represents the players have walked away from each other again without a new collective bargaining agreement. The issues remain the same – the revenue split and the system – only this time the rhetoric has gone from simmer to boil.

The NBA said there was no reason to continue talking because the players wouldn’t go down to receiving 50 percent of the basketball related income (BRI). There are no further meetings scheduled and it’s likely, if not certain, that more games will be canceled soon.

“Ultimately we were unable to bridge the gap that separates the two parties,” deputy commissioner Adam Silver said.

The union had a different story.

“I want to make it clear that you guys were lied to earlier,” said Derek Fisher, the president of the players union.

According to Fisher and NBPA executive director Billy Hunter, the owners presented the 50-50 split as an ultimatum and refused to talk about the system issues until the players agreed to it.

Hunter named names, saying that Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert told Hunter “to trust his gut,” on a system that had not been negotiated. He said that Blazers owner Paul Allen walked into the negotiation and reinforced the message that it was a 50-50 split or bust. Hunter added that owners like Jim Dolan (New York), Mickey Arison (Miami), Mark Cuban (Dallas) and Jerry Buss (Los Angeles) wanted to make a deal but other small-market owners did not.

The NBA loves to make the comparison to the NFL, but while the NFL had owners like Bob Kraft who cut through the rhetoric and helped pull a deal together, the NBA has Comic Sans Dan asking the union to trust him like they were just another sucker at one of his soon to be unveiled casinos.

Later, union attorney Jeffrey Kessler told reporters in New York, “This meeting was hijacked. Something happened in that board of governors meeting. We were making progress.”

Federal mediator George Cohen withdrew from the proceedings with a bleak statement: "In these circumstances, after carefully reviewing all of the events that have transpired, it is the considered judgment of myself ... that no useful purpose would be served by requesting the parties to continue the mediation process at this time."

To tie a ribbon on the bizarre proceedings, NBA commissioner David Stern sat out the negotiations with the flu. Whether his absence had any impact is debatable since Silver has been described as the point-person in negotiations to this point.

What makes this all so maddening is that there was actual progress made on issues such as the mid-level exception and the BRI split, which was once an intractable gulf and is now down to mere percentage points.

The league defined their stance as a 50-50 split with the union at 52.5 percent. The union suggested that they had offered a “band” that wouldn’t go lower than 50 or higher than 53 depending on the health of the league. (It’s also worth pointing out that the players received 57 percent of the BRI under the old CBA).

This was the longest stretch of continuous negotiations since the lockout began, which looks pale when you consider that the NFL met for 16 straight days at one point. If there was any urgency, and it’s hard to make that case when the two sides refused to meet over the summer, there seems to be little now.

But by far the most frustrating assertion put forward on Thursday was the NBA’s continuing insistence to frame their demand for a more restrictive system as a competitive balance issue, despite the fact that study after study shows that this is inherently impossible.

Silver said they wanted to be more like the NFL, but the NBA doesn’t have a massive national television deal that can subsidize all 30 of its teams. He also added the NHL as a model, but hockey isn’t a game that can be dominated by a small handful of superstars like basketball. There isn’t a system in the world that can replicate Dwight Howard, LeBron James and Chris Paul and put them on bad teams.

The NBA contantly trots out the comparison between the Lakers with their $90 million payroll and the Kings who had to take on Marquis Daniels’ contract to simply meet the floor threshold and avoid a fine. On the surface that makes sense, but dig just a layer below and it’s an obvious red herring.

That conveniently forgets that the Kings are rebuilding around draft picks with lower salaries and that when Sacramento did have a team worth spending money on in the early 2000’s they were among the biggest spenders in the league.

Does anyone really think that adding a handful of high-priced veterans to Sacramento’s roster would have made the Kings competitive last season when their stated goal was to develop Tyreke Evans and DeMarcus Cousins? Spending a few more dollars might have helped Sacramento win 30 games, but that’s not what they were trying to accomplish last season, and smart Kings fans will tell you they were fine with this arrangement.

Good teams tend to spend money to keep their team together once they develop and that’s tougher for smaller markets, but spending in and of itself doesn’t guarantee anything. Just ask the Knicks. Or better yet, look at the Raptors who had a $70 million payroll and one of the worst teams in the league.

Rebuilding is difficult in the NBA. It takes luck, astute drafting, knowing when to make trades and add payroll and knowing when to stay the course. It takes good management and there isn’t a system that can make inept general managers suddenly intelligent.

Spurs owner Peter Holt acknowledged as much when he referenced the luck involved in being able to draft Tim Duncan. He also said he had lost money the last two years, but then no one thought giving Richard Jefferson a multi-year deal was a good idea.  

"I think it's all about putting money in their pockets,” Hunter said and it’s hard to argue with him on this point.

Silver has maintained that the revenue and the system are separate and that he wouldn’t “trade” from one aspect to work on the other. Another word for that is compromise, but there doesn’t seem to be any room in the NBA’s vocabulary for that word.

Writers and observers have long believed that there is a deal to be made that addresses many of the owner’s concerns by reducing the player’s share of the revenues, allowing for shorter contracts and tightening the exceptions.

But the question then, as now, remains: How much is enough?