NEW YORK (AFP) ― NBA team owners ordered a lockout of players to commerce one minute after midnight on Friday as last-ditch talks failed, setting up a shutdown that threatens the 2011-2012 season.

The first NBA work stoppage since the 1998-1999 season was slashed to 50 games will halt trades, free agent signings and contract talks. Players, who would not be paid, also would be barred from using team facilities or work with coaches.

Players must also take care of their own health insurance, an issue for some who might not want to risk playing in Olympic qualifying tournaments over the next few months due to the injury consequences no longer covered by NBA clubs.

“I’m not scared,” NBA commissioner David Stern said. “I’m resigned to the potential damage it could do to our league.”

The NBA follows the National Football League into a work stoppage. The NFL reached the 107th day of its lockout on Friday with talks ongoing over a new deal but no deal set with pre-season training camps set to open in three weeks.

Three hours of talks on Thursday featuring Stern and NBA players union executive director Billy Hunter failed to break the impasse in negotiations, with players trying to avoid imposition of a firm salary cap and payroll reductions.

“I’ve been anticipating this lockout for the last two or three years,”

Hunter said. “It’s here. Maybe now we can really begin to negotiate all those issues.”

The lockout could shrink or even wipe out the 2011-2012 campaign, which has pre-season camps and games in October and would usually start about November 1.

“Obviously, the clock is now running with regard to whether or not there will or will be a loss of games,” Hunter said.

“Players want to continue playing basketball and are very disappointed.”

Hunter hoped talks might resume in two weeks.

“I’m hoping that over the next month or so that there will be sort of a softening on their side and maybe we have to soften our position as well,”

Hunter said.

Stern says only eight of the NBA’s 30 teams are profitable and teams are losing $300 million dollars overall with a huge divide between owners and players in terms of financial proposals.

“The expiring collective bargaining agreement created a broken system that produced huge financial losses for our teams,” deputy commissioner Adam Silver said.

“We need a sustainable business model that allows all 30 teams to be able to compete for a championship, fairly compensates our players, and provides teams, if well-managed, with an opportunity to be profitable.”

Players made a final pitch at the meeting but Stern said it would have raised the average player salary from $5 million, the level the NBA was willing to accept, to $7 million in its sixth year, a level Stern could not accept.

“We don’t have any choice,” Stern said. “We’ve tried unsuccessfully to persuade the union. There has to be a return on the investment we are making.

”It worries me that we’re not closer. We have a huge philosophical divide.”

Exactly when such stars as LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Dirk Nowitzki might return to the court is now unclear just over two weeks after German star Nowitzki led Dallas to victory over James and the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals.

”These things take on a life of their own and I don’t know where that life will lead,” Stern said. ”We have to go back and look at everything.”

The NFL decertified its union and pressed an anti-trust case against the league in court, a move the NBA union is unlikely to copy for now, Hunter said, seeing the courts allow the NFL to maintain its lockout.

Players largely want to keep things as they are, saying they should not have to endure pay cuts because some owners cannot stop spending themselves into oblivion.

“We tried to avoid the lockout,” said Matt Bonner, a player and member of the union executive committee. “Unfortunately we couldn’t reach a deal.”

Some NBA players could look to European leagues for paychecks, but stars are not expected to look overseas if a lockout is imposed.

“I just hope things go smooth, we’re not locked out for as long as people think and we get back to what we’re supposed to do,” said NBA scoring champion Kevin Durant.