LOS ANGELES—In the latest wrinkle to the drama that won’t end, an Italian pro basketball club is no longer entirely interested in having Kobe Bryant play 10 games.

Now its owner is also offering Bryant a one-game contract for $1 million or $2 million, depending on various reports out of Italy.

The catch: Bryant hasn’t agreed to anything.

The one-game plan is a substantial boost from Bryant’s average of $307,859 per game with the Lakers this season, assuming there are any National Basketball Association (NBA) games.

Virtus Bologna owner Claudio Sabatini said he secured sponsorship money and a TV network deal for “Kobe Night,” according to Italian newspaper Il Resto del Carlino.

The parameters have definitely changed from Bologna’s initial offer of a $3.2-million, 10-game deal for Bryant to play during the NBA lockout.

Bryant could not be reached for comment.

Bryant, 33, is owed $83.5 million over the final three years of his Lakers contract. The Lakers can’t comment on any lockout matters or else they’ll be fined by the NBA, but Bryant will presumably have an insurance policy if he plays in Italy.

“There’s no way he’s playing without one, I guarantee you,” said a source familiar with the situation.

It’s rare for pro players to get seriously injured in exhibition games, but it happens.

Perhaps the worst case involved former New England Patriots running back Robert Edwards, who tore ligaments in his knee during an exhibition flag football game with other rookies in Honolulu after the 1998 season.

Edwards ran for 1,115 yards as a rookie but his National Football League career was short-circuited after he tried to defend against a pass in a league-sponsored four-on-four game on the beach the same week as the Pro Bowl.

Even the top NBA official can’t do anything about Bryant and other players going overseas to make money.

“Those are their rights,” Commissioner David Stern recently said. “We have no reaction to that other than to be safe.”

Despite a minor procedure in Germany on his balky right knee in June, Bryant hasn’t acted like a porcelain figure during the off-season.

He played in two exhibition games in the Philippines in July with other NBA stars, including Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose. But Bryant was the drawing card and 21,000 fans attended one game in Manila.

Then in August, Bryant quietly showed up for a Drew League game in Los Angeles and scored 43 points.

It was quite a show. With the score tied and the fans chanting, “Kobe, Kobe,” Bryant was guarded by James Harden of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Bryant hit a fall-away jumper from the top of the key for the game-winner.

Presumably, an Italian promoter would be happy with a similar performance.

NBA, players heading to federal mediation

The NBA and its locked-out players will use the same federal mediator who tried to resolve the National Football League’s (NFL) labor dispute months before it eventually ended.

George Cohen, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), announced on Wednesday that he will oversee negotiations between the NBA and the NBA Players Association. Those meetings will start next Tuesday in New York.

Cohen said he already has been in contact with representatives of both sides “for a number of months.”

“I have participated in separate, informal, off-the-record discussions with the principals representing the NBA and the NBPA concerning the status of their collective-bargaining negotiations,” Cohen said in a statement issued by the Washington-based FMCS.

“It is evident that the ongoing dispute will result in a serious impact, not only upon the parties directly involved, but also, of major concern, on interstate commerce—i.e., the employers and working men and women who provide services related to the basketball games, and, more generally, on the economy of every city in which those games are scheduled to be played.”

Cohen was present for talks between NFL owners and players for 16 days in February and March but couldn’t bring them to agreement. When that mediation broke off on March 11, the union disbanded, players sued owners in federal court, and the league locked out players.

After negotiations resumed later—including with a different, court-appointed mediator—a new NFL collective-bargaining agreement was completed and signed in August.

The NBA’s labor talks stalled on Monday, and the league announced it was calling off the first two weeks of its regular season, which was supposed to begin on November 1.

The preseason was wiped out earlier.

Cohen was appointed director of the FMCS, an independent US government agency, by President Barack Obama in 2009. The next year, Cohen helped broker a deal between Major League Soccer and its players just before the season was scheduled to begin, earning kudos from both the commissioner and players’ union.

As a labor lawyer, Cohen played a key role in ending the most notorious professional sports work stoppage in US history, the baseball strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series. In 1995, as lead lawyer for the baseball players’ union, he helped win an injunction against the sport’s owners from US District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor—who is now a Supreme Court justice—ending the seven-and-a-half-month strike.

(With AP)