Commissioner David Stern wasn’t saying much when he came out of Thursday’s negotiating session in New York, but what he did say was a dire statement about the NBA’s current labor situation: “The calendar is not our friend.”

Despite hopes from the players and owners that the start of the season would be unaffected by the ongoing lockout, ESPN’s Ric Bucher is reporting that the NBA will officially postpone the opening of training camps on Friday.

The league last postponed training camps during the lockout of 1998, and with camps set to open on Oct. 3, that same decision seems imminent once again. Both parties have recently expressed hopes of getting an agreement together in time to keep the regular season intact (the first game is between the Mavericks and Bulls on Nov. 1), but Stern—who turned 69 on Thursday—deputy commissioner Adam Silver, union executive director Billy Hunter and union president Derek Fisher didn’t sound as optimistic on the way out of Thursday’s meeting.

“I don’t have control of that part of it,” Fisher said. “That would be more of a commissioner Stern, Adam Silver question in terms of logistics of starting the season on time. I’m not going to try and make a guess on that one. The calendar’s obviously not our friend, but we’re not going to give up on the process because of the time.

“We’ll keep working at it until we figure this thing out, but right now there isn’t anything to really report or say,” Fisher continued. “I don’t have any answers to any questions, other than we’ll keep working until we find some solutions.”

Fisher doesn’t think Thursday’s meeting changed the mood from last Tuesday, writes Bucher, when an potential breakthrough quickly turned into another stalemate.

Stern told reporters that the labor relations committee would convene on Friday. The two sides don’t have any specific plans to meet again, but both parties said they hope to give it another go next week.