NEW YORK — Billy Hunter is getting a break today from the cabal of agents who want to kick him out of his job. They are sitting on a decertification petition with more than 200 signatures, and a source in that cabal told SheridanHoops.com that it is highly unlikely the petition will be filed with the NLRB until Hunter meets with 30 team player representatives at a Times Square hotel.

So Hunter has bought some time. What remains to be seen is whether he has garnered any broad-based support — and whether commissioner David Stern’s unprecedented wekend public relations push through new media and old will have its intended effect.

Stern was on Twitter last night (words I never though I’d type) answering questions from players (Dwyane Wade, Spencer Hawes), fans and media, after which the league released a 92-second video on YouTube, which showed projections for a $7.7 million average salary for players in the 10th year of the current proposed deal and even had a hypothetical breakdown of what a team may look like in 2013-14, with a “superstar” making $17 million, an “All-Star” making $14 million, other starters making between $8-10 million and with a total payroll of about $77 million.

The proposal to the players also was leaked to several traditional news outlets. USA Today, posted the proposal online.

Finally, the league sent a memo to players and posted it on its Web site,  asking players to “study our proposal carefully, and to accept it as a fair compromise of the issues between us.” Stern asked players to focus on the compromises the league has made during negotiations, such as dropping its demands for a hard salary cap, non-guaranteed contracts and salary rollbacks.

But one issue that was not highlighted in the memo could be the biggest impediment to a deal.

That is the provision that calls for what would basically be an unlimited escrow tax, a system under which 10 percent of players’ paychecks would be withheld each season to ensure than total player salaries do not come in higher than 50 percent of BRI. Additionally, if the 10 percent withholding did not get the players’ share down to 50 percent, the shortage would be obtained from the 1 percent of BRI that is being earmarked for improved retirement beneits. And if that didn’t do the trick, the players would have to fork over the remaining money in an as-yet-to-be-determined manner. In the previous labor agreement, the escrow withholding was capped at 8 percent in the 2010-11 season.

So the player reps basically have three options to choose from Monday.

_ Agree to put the owners’ proposal up for a vote of the entire player population. Such a vote would have to take place in person.

_ Ask that negotiations be re-opened on a limited number of system issues, with the understanding that the proposal would be put to a vote if those system issues are amicably resolved –a possiblity Hunter alluded to in a text message to Sam Amick of SI.com.

_ Reject the proposal, thereby opening the floodgates for decertification of the union and a long court battle that would empiril the chances of having any 2011-12 season.

So that is the lay of the land heading into Monday’s meeting. Now let’s have a look around the Web at what is being reported by various news outlets:

NEW YORK — Players reps from all 30 NBA teams are arriving in town today, and tomorrow they’ll get debriefed on what is and what isn’t in the owners’ latest proposal.

Up until now, they’ve been getting fed plenty of bad information in the two days since the owners and players went their separate ways at the conclusion of Thursday night’s bargaining session.

Case in point: ESPN.com drew 5,000-plus comments on a story about how players could be sent down to the D-League and have their salary reduced to $75,000 during their first five seasons. A dealkiller, right?

Maybe it would be, except it is NOT in the owners’ proposal.

“It’s of grave concern to the league that there is an enormous amount of misinformation concerning our proposal, both on Twitter and in the more traditional media,” Adam Silver, the deputy commissioner, told the New York Times on Saturday night. “We believe that if the players are fully informed as to what is and is not in our proposal, they will agree that its terms are beneficial to them and represent a fair compromise.”

More from the story in The Times, by Howard Beck: “Hours after the NBA delivered its final collective bargaining proposal to the players union, the rumors and the rhetoric began to flow. The deal would let teams send players to the development league and cut their pay. Teams that used certain salary cap exceptions would lose the right to re-sign their own players. “Bird” rights would be jeopardized. The middle class would be eliminated. These and other concerns filled Twitter timelines on Friday, a day after labor talks concluded. They turned out to be unfounded, speculative or simply false. The D-League is not mentioned anywhere in the seven-page proposal that was delivered to the union on Friday — a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. Nor are there any measures that could curtail “Bird” rights. While some provisions might crimp the N.B.A.’s middle class, others could boost it. In the absence of official documentation — neither the league nor the union released the proposal publicly — the rumors have prevailed.”

This is one of the problems that happens when you keep the media in the dark when it behooves you to let them see the light. Even if you tell the writers nothing, they still have to write something. And if falsehoods are being reported, it is incumbent upon somebody to set the record straight — and quickly — before the misinformation becomes accepted as fact.

Case in point: Kevin Durant is so upset with the proposal that he hasn’t even seen that he has already decided to vote against it, and he is considering three different overseas options.