NEW YORK — The next logical step in the illogical NBA lockout is for David Boies to call Jeffrey Mishkin, or for Jeffrey Mishkin to call David Boies.

The latter attorney, Boies, who represented Al Gore against George W. Bush in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, now represents NBA players, and Mishkin is the outside counsel for NBA commissioner David Stern and the owners.

It would take approximately 2 minutes for their secretaries to put that call together.

And after obfuscating and posturing for the better part of an hour in a meeting with reporters Monday night, Boies finally yielded to the  relentless logical questioning of yours truly, put his hands to his temples for 13 seconds and then said he may just go ahead and make that phone call sometime in the next day or two.

“Some lawyers say to pick up the phone is a sign of weakness,” Boies said. “But if you’re weak, you’re weak, and if you’re strong, you’re strong.  It doesn’t make you weak or strong by your calling or not calling. On the other hand, until they’re prepared to say something other than what they just put out in this statement, the question is, why are you calling?”

This particular episode of peacocking … oops, I mean news briefing … was designed to be a show of strength from the players’ new lead attorney, an epic billable hour ($1,225 is Boies’ going rate) of rhetorical posturing about how the NBA owners are now in really, really big trouble because they are leaving themselves open for triple damages —  about $6 billion if the entire 2011-12 season is missed.

Boies announced that two separate players’ lawsuits were being combined, with a new suit being filed in Minnesota, the same jurisdiction — covered by the 8th Circuit in the Court of Appeals — where the NFL players had their temporary restraining order ending the NFL lockout overturned.

“I suspect that we will hear from them, either in settlement discussions or litigation. They are going to have to answer the complaint, and were looking forward to engaging them,” Boies said. ”If this is a matter that can be settled, we’re prepared to do that. If the league’s approach is to ignore this litigation and try to go into a state of denial and hope it goes away, I think that will be not in anyone’s interest.”

With former union director Billy Hunter sitting alongside him, the players’ new lead advocate said combining the complaints was the best way to expedite the case, to which I strenuously objected. Yes, I understand that it is probably incumbent upon the owners to pick up the phone first, since it is bad form for an attorney to sue someone and then call them up to ask if they’d like to settle.

But the NBA owners have gone mum, and at a certain point it can do no harm to make an exploratory call to the people you just filed suit against. It might not be the traditional thing to do, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing, either.