Sydney Spirit's immediate future has been placed in the players' hands after Basketball Australia revealed the squad had not been paid for almost a month.
BA mistakenly believed payments made by reclusive owner Greg Evans at the start of November covered the month when, in fact, they were October's wages.
It's believed the players and coaching staff are around $70,000 out of pocket and must now decide whether to accept a reduced figure via BA's rescue package or cut their losses and quit the league.
Spirit skipper Jason Smith has indicated the players want to continue and will take to the court against league leaders South Dragons on Saturday night.
A final decision on whether the game proceeds will be made by midday Friday.
"We'd worked on the assumption the players had been paid for the month of November, which meant the game on Saturday night, being in November, they would have been paid for," BA's chief executive Scott Derwin explained on Thursday.
"We've now discovered that that payment was not made by their employer, Mr Evans, and therefore they haven't been paid for November."
"That's thrown a curve ball into our calculations in terms of the rescue package we're trying to mount."
"We are now re-working the figures and will talk to the players again (on Friday) with a result of those calculations to see where we sit."
"By midday (Friday) we will have to make a definite decision one way or the other as to whether this game goes ahead Saturday night."
"We do have confidence (it will). The players want to play it and we're confident it will come together but unfortunately we're not absolutely across the line at the moment."
Derwin admitted the players had little choice but to accept BA's rescue package, jointly funded by the governing body and rival clubs, and play on Saturday night.
"We'll be able to offer then 'x' amount of dollars and they then need to make a decision," he said.
"The alternative for them is not bright. If the game doesn't go ahead then Sydney Spirit collapses, they won't continue in the league and most of the players will be out of work."
Dragons boss Mark Cowan has threatened not to bring his team to Sydney due to the possibility any points gained from a victory could be lost in the event of Spirit's collapse in the coming weeks.
But Derwin warned: "If the game goes ahead on Saturday night and the Dragons don't play, he'll be forfeiting that game and that could lead to some other action."
BA is yet to hear from Evans, who has been served a default notice and given 10 business days to respond to a series of licence breaches.
"(There's been) no response from Mr Evans. He continues to be quite an elusive character," Derwin said.
"Even by email he is not responding."