Las Vegas shoots for an NBA team
Sin City hosts All-Star weekend, but gambling is the deal-breaker on having a pro team.
By Michael A. Hiltzik, Times Staff Writer
February 16, 2007
Don't bet on it!
LAS VEGAS — To hear Mayor Oscar Goodman tell it, this city of extravagance has everything: the best hotels, the best entertainment, the best retail shopping, the most spectacular events.
But the one sign of a major league city that it lacks is, well, a major league team. The mayor wants to fix that — and he thinks playing host to Sunday's National Basketball Assn. All-Star game will help his city's case.
The NBA has never played its showcase game in a city without an NBA team. Goodman, who made his fortune as a defense lawyer representing Las Vegas mobsters, is prone to crowing already about its apparent Vegas success.
"You want tickets, fuhgeddaboutit, it's sold out," he says.
He sees local support for the game as evidence that his "great American city" would be a great home for a professional sports team.
But Goodman's city also is Sin City, a community commonly regarded as a great place to carouse. And the mayor faces a tough sell.
For starters, NBA Commissioner David Stern says Goodman is mistaken if he thinks the league is using the game to test the Las Vegas waters.
The attraction of Las Vegas as an All-Star venue, he said, was the availability of hotel rooms and convention space for all the activities that surround the game.
"But that's a different analysis from the one that goes on with respect to whether a city can support a franchise," Stern said.
One problem: gambling
And then there's gaming. Nevada is the only state in which sports gambling is legal.
As the NBA commissioner put it in an interview with The Times: "If they'll take the NBA off the board" — that is, eliminate betting on league games — "we could consider Las Vegas for an NBA franchise."
Many gambling and sports experts say Stern's demand is anachronistic when 48 of the 50 states have legalized gambling in some form.
"There's a little disconnect between the people in the leagues and the reality of what gambling is in the United States," says David Schwartz, a gaming industry expert at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. "Gambling today is strictly regulated."
That reassurance doesn't seem to impress pro league officials, many of whom fear even the public perception that gamblers might fix a game to fill their own pockets. The nationwide prevalence of legalized gambling, moreover, has not fully dispelled its unsavory aura.
As for the NBA, Stern says, it is concerned about gambling more as a distraction than as a moral issue or a threat to the game's integrity. He says he wants customers focused on what's happening on the basketball courts, not among oddsmakers.
"Historically, there's a notion that most of our fans are basketball fans," he says, "not point-spread fans."
The quest to bring a top sports franchise to town dates back years. With a population of 1.7 million, the Las Vegas metropolitan area is equal to or larger than many communities that have major league football, basketball, hockey and baseball teams.
Its population has more than doubled since 1990, but the prominence of gambling has been an enduring obstacle to major league interest.
More recently, Goodman has made landing a sports franchise a cornerstone of mayoral policy. In a January "state of the city" speech, Goodman pledged: "This is going to be the year that we are going to be involved with serious discussions about having a professional sports team locate in Las Vegas."
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