Posted by Sabrina B. @gametimegirl

NBA commissioner David Stern missed Thursday morning’s Board of Governors meeting with an illness and most likely will not attend the mediation sessions between the owners and locked-out players scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

“He was sent home this morning by his doctor with the flu,” deputy commissioner Adam Silver said after the Board of Governors meeting. “He’s still actively working at home, my Blackberry buzzing on my waist as we speak.”

Silver said the 69-year-old Stern would still be an “active participant.”

A third day of talks with federal mediator George Cohen was scheduled for Thursday afternoon, as the owners and players attempt to salvage the 2011-12 regular season. The first two weeks of the season — 100 games — already have been canceled due to the player lockout, now in its 112th day.

Silver, addressing a news conference after the Board of Governors met, said it was “unclear” to him whether an 82-game schedule was still possible. Stern has said it will be difficult to play the canceled games later because arenas are filling the dates with other events. Silver said the released dates after the cancellations were filled “almost instantaneously.”

But he left open the possibility it could get done if a new labor deal comes soon.

“There’s no doubt that once we come to an agreement with the players’ association, we will have a common interest in putting together as complete a schedule as possible, and whether or not an 82-game schedule is still possible is unclear to me,” Silver said. “As David has said previously, we’ve just lost part of the calendar. I think that’s part of the pressure on both sides.”

The Board of Governors took up at least one negotiation-related topic, as Silver said the meeting featured “a robust discussion on revenue sharing.”

Stern has said the new deal to replace the CBA that expired July 1 will include an expanded revenue-sharing plan among the teams once a new the collective bargaining agreement is finished.

The players have called for revenue sharing to be part of the CBA, as a means of assuring small-market teams can compete — and as a way to lessen or avoid the salary reductions sought by the owners.

“In order to complete the revenue-sharing discussions we need to know where we’re going to come out on the (basketball-related income) split, particularly,” Silver said.

On Wednesday, Cohen said players and owners met in a variety of settings during mediation, sometimes in subcommittees, other times in groups as large as 40 people.

“Everyone is extremely focused on the core issues, the difficult issues that confront them,” he said.

Sources told ESPN The Magazine’s Chris Broussard that the owners are once again offering a 49-to-51-percent range of the basketball-related income to the players. That is essentially where the players would get a minimum of 49 percent of BRI or a max of 51 percent depending on how much revenue the league takes in that year.

Although some of the system issues differ in this offer by the owners, the players are likely to reject a 49-51 offer just as they did two weeks ago.

Also, while the sides haven’t agreed to anything, the owners have been open to accepting a $5 million midlevel exception, sources told Broussard. That’s down from $5.8 million under the old agreement but up from the $3.4 million the owners had been offering.

In other business, the Board of Governors re-elected Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor as its chairman and heard a presentation from New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov on the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which will become the Nets’ home for the 2012-13 season.

WRITTEN BY ESPN.com TrueHoop writer Henry Abbott, ESPN The Magazine senior NBA writer Chris Broussard and The Associated Press contributed to this report & FULL STORY HERE