NBA Ensures a Full Season : Pro basketball: No-strike / no-lockout agreement avoids work stoppage as contract talks continue.

Trying their hand at the new national pastime--hardball--NBA owners offered their players a no-lockout pledge, demanded a no-strike pledge and got it. That ensured, after a strike in baseball and a lockout in hockey, that the NBA season will open a week from today and play through June.

“The 1994-95 season through and including our finals will be played in their entirety,” NBA Commissioner David Stern said Thursday at a joint news conference in New York.

“We’re here to announce the season will go on,” said Charles Grantham, head of the players’ association. “Our players are very concerned about the integrity of the game and a full and complete championship season.”

The NBA has never had a work stoppage, but its last collective bargaining agreement expired in June and there have been no formal negotiating sessions.

The union put forth a list of proposals to overturn the present system, seeking to abolish the salary cap and the draft but, before negotiating, tried to pursue its case through the courts.

Despite their union’s tough stance, however, players recently began taking a softer line, emboldening owners to demand an assurance they wouldn’t go out.

Reports surfaced that several young stars, including Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning, had passed word they didn’t want to go on strike. Leonard Armato, the agent for O’Neal and Hakeem Olajuwon, said he didn’t see the need for a strike.

The Chicago Bulls didn’t even have a union player representative. Several Indiana Pacer veterans came out against a strike.

“I don’t think I’d go on strike,” Pacer center LaSalle Thompson said. “I’d run through that picket line. Sam Mitchell and I were joking, that if the owners locked us out, we’d sue them to let us come back to work.”

Charles Barkley went on TV to advocate a rookie salary cap--a give-back the owners had asked for.

The NBA and the union have now agreed not to disrupt play this season. Negotiations for the new contract will begin soon.

The NBA has asked for a hard cap--one with an absolute ceiling--instead of the current one that allows teams to sign their own free agents to contracts of any size, such as the Lakers’ $14-million balloon payment to Magic Johnson for this season.

The union has offered a rookie cap but wants to do away with the old cap.

“It’s clear we have a long way to go, a long, hard negotiation ahead of us,” Grantham said.

Union President Buck Williams of the Portland Trail Blazers said he liked the idea of a no-strike, no-lockout deal.

“I hope and pray there is no work stoppage,” Williams said. “There would be no winner. It would be foolish at this point to have a work stoppage.”

The union lost its antitrust suit challenging the salary cap, the college draft and restricted free agency.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York is expected to hand down a verdict on the appeal soon.

No formal talks have been held in months, although the sides--led by Stern and Grantham--have met in recent days.

There had been reports Wednesday that NBA owners were threatening to lock the players out. The lockout was to have been voted on at a meeting of the Board of Governors next Monday in Chicago.

Stern is believed to have persuaded the owners to start the season under the terms of the old contract, in return for the players’ promise not to strike.

“The Board of Governors has been told it can go trick-or-treating on Monday,” Stern said.

* OUT OF ACTION

Chris Mullin of the Golden State Warriors will be sidelined six to eight weeks while he recovers from a knee injury. C4

* JAZZ BEATS LAKERS

Cedric Ceballos had 26 points, 12 rebounds and four steals, but Utah defeated the Lakers, 99-88, in their final exhibition game. C9