The two major issues involved the length of contracts, an age minimum and the size of the salary cap.

Under the last CBA, free agents could sign contracts that lasted for seven years. The owners wanted to roll back that number to five. The two sides split the difference and settled on six. But again, the players didn’t have to move at all on that issue. It was another example of owners who can’t restrain themselves, so they sign stiffs to long-term deals and then complain later that they have to pay them for the duration of their contracts.

By requesting a lesser max, the owners were looking for someone to save them from themselves, and under this new CBA the players were magnanimous enough to oblige.

The 19-year-old age limit is also a point on which the players didn’t need to give in. Some of the NBA’s premier stars – LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Jermaine O’Neal, to name but a few – were signed right out of high school. While most of us ideally would like to see kids remain in college and mature both as individuals and as basketball players before they make the leap to the pros, it’s ludicrous to demand that they do so when other sports like baseball, tennis and golf allow teenagers to join their ranks if they can handle the rigors and make the grade.

But obviously owners were getting tired of paying for on-the-job training. They didn’t want to pay a high school kid like Tyson Chandler or Eddy Curry to learn the game’s finer points when they can stay in college and do it. Again, players would have been justified in challenging the owners on this, but they decided that labor peace was more important and a youngster can wait another year or two before buying the tricked-out Escalade, assuming a college booster hadn’t done so already.

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The owners did offer to raise the salary cap in this new CBA from 48 percent of revenues to 51 percent, which would increase the amount of cash teams can spend on players’ salaries. That could trickle down to a modest raise for each member of a 12-man roster, but it’s not as significant a concession as the players made on length of contract.

Still, the overwhelming reaction to this agreement is one of satisfaction on all sides. The players vaporized the impression that their union was being run by agents, because if agents were in control they would have dragged this through until next summer and maybe beyond. The players took charge of their own destinies and made a decision that is practical and admirable.

The owners got what they wanted on the key points, and now they can continue the process of raking in ungodly sums of moolah. But they can thank the players for being more reasonable than they have been, a rarity indeed.

This is the kind of upset the sports world could use more of.