New York ? New York (ap) — Anyone who has been to a car dealership, or bought a home, understands how negotiating works.

One side offers a number, the other counters, and they meet somewhere in the middle and make a deal.

That’s not the way it’s working in the NBA’s labor standoff — even with potentially $2 billion at stake for each side.

Owners and players keep insisting they are ready and willing to make the necessary financial step for an agreement. Yet talks have broken down each of the last two weeks with little movement and the same type of answer: “We’re here, they’re there, and that’s that.”

That won’t get players back on the court or fans in the seats.

And with both sides so entrenched, it might be a question of when, not if, another round of cancellations will be necessary.

“I don’t know,” Commissioner David Stern said Friday when asked about the next deadline. “We just had a difficult day. We’ll go back, we’ll go to the office Monday and see what to do about this big mess.”

They could start with a phone call to the players’ association to schedule more talks, and the sides likely will meet again soon. But it will remain pointless if neither side is prepared to offer compromise.

Owners are insistent on a 50-50 split of basketball-related income. Players have proposed reducing their guarantee from 57 percent down to 52.5, saying that will transfer more than $1.5 billion to owners over six years.

And when neither side would go further Friday, NBA officials said union executive director Billy Hunter ended the session.

The difference between 50 and 52.5 percent is about $100 million annually, based on last season’s revenues, or $1 billion over the course of the 10-year agreement the NBA is seeking.

The cost of not making a deal?

“We expect there to be a $2 billion loss for us for the loss of the season, which we will then begin to dig out from under and try to get back, if there were a season’s loss,” Stern said. “And the players would lose $2 billion. Period.”

The losses already have been piling up. Stern said wiping out the preseason schedule, which would have ended Friday, cost the league $200 million. The first month of real games adds another couple hundred million, and Hunter has said missing a month would cost the players about $350 million.