NBA Makes Labor Deal at 11th Hour : Pro basketball: Last-minute agreement doesn’t include luxury tax. It still has to be ratified by the players.

Labor peace, or at least a cease fire, came to the NBA on Tuesday night as the player’s association and owner’s negotiating committee reached a new collective bargaining agreement minutes before a union-imposed deadline.

The new pact still must be ratified by the players in votes Aug. 30 and Sept. 7, making this the second attempt to close the deal. In June, the same union leaders reached an agreement, only to have that derailed when several dissident agents and players, most notably Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing, said they were upset with the process and pushed to decertify the National Basketball Players Assn.

That led to a midnight (EDT) deadline, with the NBPA saying it would no longer fight the decertification process if it could not finalize a deal. The sides pushed that time limit, then agreed in New York to a six-year contract in which:

--The salary cap would be increased from $15 million to about $24 million in the first year of the agreement and to about $32 million by 2000-2001.

--The average salary, now approximately $1.7 million, will be increased to about $3 million in the sixth year.

--A cap would be placed on rookie salaries based on the average salaries received by the picks at each position over the previous seven years, with allowance for a 20% raise. The contracts would be limited to three years, after which a player would become an unrestricted free agent.

--The college draft would be reduced from two rounds to one after the first three years.

--The luxury tax, a sticking point with players in the earlier agreement, would be eliminated. That had been an owner’s concession since last week.

--A $1 million exception would be added for teams over the salary cap to sign free agents, although it was not immediately known if the same slot will be made available for trades.

--Teams can use 50% of an injured player’s salary to sign another player.

--A player who has completed two seasons with the same team can re-sign at double his salary. This is an owner’s compromise from the June 21 agreement in which any team would be taxed for going over the cap, but still restricts players who start low on the payroll and become stars from reaching market value.

--The owners can reopen the contract after three years if salaries exceed a certain revenue percentage.

“We’re very happy the NBA met our concerns,” Portland’s Buck Williams, president of the union, said. “We feel very fortunate that we could work out an agreement at 5 minutes, 10 minutes before midnight.

“We took very careful account of our membership concerns . . . and we’re confident that this new agreement fully addresses those concerns, and ensures our fans that the 1995-96 season will start on time.”

Added Clyde Drexler: “I still think it’s very fair. Everything has been increased from the last deal. The cap continues to rise and there’s more free agency.”

Commissioner David Stern--who last Thursday said, “We are resigned to the fact that there won’t be a season”--also agreed that he expects training camps to open on time in early October and the regular season about a month later.

Also, Stern said he would wait to call a vote by team owners until the players make their decision.

“Our indications are that it won’t be a difficult sell,” he said. “We don’t think it’s going to be a problem. . . . Although this new agreement poses greater risks for our owners than the first deal did, I will urge them to ratify it in order to ensure that our tremendous growth continues and the 1995-96 season is played in its entirety.”

Twenty-five players attended the meeting, including Utah’s John Stockton, Phoenix’s Danny Manning, Dallas’ Jimmy Jackson and Cleveland’s Mark Price. About 90 minutes after the players went behind closed doors, NBA officials came to the hotel, and Stern arrived a short time later.

“We know there’s still a lot of work to be done and there are players who want to know what the deal is,” union Executive Director Simon Gourdine said. “We have to let them know it’s a contract worthy of their support.”