NBA notebook: Real referees will return when real games begin

NEW YORK — The real referees will work the real games.

The NBA and its referees union agreed on a two-year contract Friday, ending a lockout of more than a month and saving the league from using replacements when the regular season starts.

The officials ratified the deal that was reached earlier this week in a vote Friday night. No details of the vote were provided, nor were terms of the agreement.

"We are pleased to reach this agreement," NBA commissioner David Stern said in a statement. "The negotiations extended further than either side had hoped, but when our regular season tips off on Tuesday we'll have the best referees in the world officiating our games."

The referees union did not comment.

The referees will begin a three-day training camp Saturday and be ready when the regular season starts Tuesday. The league had been using replacement officials during exhibition play.

The contract between the league and the National Basketball Referees Association expired Sept. 1, and the league announced its was locking out the officials on Sept. 18, saying they had rejected its final contract offer.

The NBA decided to go with replacements late last month after the referees rejected a deal the league said its negotiators had already agreed to.

That raised the possibility of the league starting the season with replacement officials for the first time since 1995. But progress was made in a meeting this week at league headquarters that included Stern, who had previously pulled out of the negotiations after referees lead negotiator Lamell McMorris criticized the commissioner's behavior.

Stern rejoined the talks this week at the request of the referees.

"It was always our intention to make a deal and our hope. I thought that perhaps the rhetoric had gotten a little bit too heated and it would be better for me to withdraw," Stern said earlier Friday during a conference call. "But it was requested by the other side that I return and that they were coming in to make a deal and they asked me to be there, and I thought I owed them out of my respect to them to honor that request."

The referees' contracts have usually been for five years, but the NBA consented to a two-year deal at the request of the union, which hoped it could renegotiate sooner with the economy hopefully in better shape.