The games during the first two weeks of the season, November 3 to 16, will not be played or made up, deputy commissioner Russ Granik said. The league wiped out 99 games, losing games in a labor fight for the first time, and with that the NBA's 51-year streak of 35,001 consecutive games came to an end.

The league had been the only major professional sport in North America that had never lost a game due to a labor dispute. The players and owners are arguing over rising salaries, among other issues.

The NBA follows a path trod by the National Football League in 1987, the NationaL Hockey League in 1994 and Major League Baseball several times, most destructively in 1994 when the World Series was canceled.

``We're mindful of the fact that baseball teams competing in thepost season are losing $ 20 million and that hockey teams are filing for bankruptcy,'' David Stern, the NBA Commissioner said. ``Maybe this day was inevitable.''

The next move will come from the owners, who will deliver acounter proposal later this week. ``It doesn't look promising,'' commissioner David Stern said. ``The reality is that the owners had no choice.''

Stern and Granik made the announcement late in the afternoon at a midtown Manhattan Hotel after the sides had met for two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

The players made a counter proposal in the morning, addressing the owners' concern for ``cost certainty'' by asking for a luxury tax that would be paid by owners who sign players to exorbitant contracts.

Stern said the idea of a tax was something the owners would look at, but by itself it was not enough to stop the league from canceling games for the first time in its history.

``We had a somewhat more constructive dialogue, but it's hard to say if we got closer toan agreement,'' Granik said. ``We promised to come back with our own set of proposals.''

The owners imposed the lockout July 1, and the summer and early fall passed with the sides meeting only twice for formal bargaining sessions. The talks on Tuesday were the third between the sides.

Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutombo, Ray Allen, Antonio Davis and John Starks were among the players who attended the meeting. The owners were represented by Gordon Gund (Cleveland), Les Alexander (Houston), Abe Pollin (Washington) David Checketts (New York) and Jerry Colangelo (Phoenix).

Arbitrator John Feerick, Dean of Fordham Law School, is expected rule in a week or two on a Union grievance that more than 200 players with guaranteed contracts must be paid during the lockout. An agreement in principle had to be reached by Tuesday to preserve the 82-game season.

The season was scheduled to begin on November 3, but it could conceivably have been pushed back a week or so to give teams about four weeks to make trades, signabout 200 free agents and hold abbreviated training camps.

In the last labor agreement in 1995, the owners agreed to pay the players between 48 percent and 51.8 percent of revenues. If the percentage went higher and owners claim it reached 57 percent last season the owners had the right to toss out the old deal and seek a new one, which they did.

They have demanded ``cost certainty'' from the players, meaning they want to put an absolute ceiling on the amount of money that can be devoted to payrolls. The Union calls such a system a ``hard'' salary cap and has vowed not to accept one.