The Israeli League today has announced it's canceling the rest of the 2017-18 season due to the players strike. The national championship was at the final leg of the regular season, with six games originally scheduled for last Monday, but thesen games were moved to today, Thursday in the hope of allowing more time for discussions and negotiation, with the warning that if an agreement could be reached, then, the League would cancel the season. The agreement didn't come and the League has released the following statetment on its official site:

"The board of directors held a long meeting today and examined the matter in depth. We regret that we have reached this breaking point. The chairman made great efforts to reach an agreed solution with the players' organization, in order to continue the regular activity of the league. We negotiated for weeks and proposed compromise proposals that were not accepted by the players.

The players asked the sports minister to reconcile the parties, but eventually rejected the compromise plan of the minister, in contrast to the director of the league. Yesterday we sat with the players' organization for many hours and took additional steps in favor of the Israeli players, but they also rejected these proposals.

In the last effort to save the season, the league accepted the offer proposed by Shimon Amsalem, deputy chairman of the players' organization, to resolve the crisis. However, Nir Alon, the organization's chairman, informed us that the proposal was not on the agenda. In this situation the players' strike prevents the rest of the season, and in the absence of players it is impossible to hold games. Given the constraints of schedules and other objective factors, the season cannot go on in this situation. Our hearts are with basketball fans, with the hundreds of employees associated with the league, with the owners of the teams and with all the players involved in the industry. We share the disappointment caused to all the basketball fans".

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