The NBA is taking its All-Star Game to a city without a NBA team for the first time this weekend. As most of you are probably aware, Las Vega$ will play host to the festivities and the sports world waits with baited breath for the stories of debauchery that will accompany the intersection of a league that can't stay out of trouble in Indianapolis and a city that causes trouble for librarians from Indianapolis.
Vega$, with it's big money residents, exploding population and constant influx of tourists, seems like a sure bet for the professional sports world but outside of minor leagues and the occasional displaced team the city has never been home to a team. As the New York Times reported on Sunday, that isn't likely to change anytime soon.
The odds, however, that the N.B.A. or any other league will soon come to Las Vegas for more than just a vacation — through relocation or expansion — are low. For now.
David Stern, the N.B.A. commissioner, has made “integrity of the game” his battle cry in the years since the Pacers-Pistons brawl and says that local gambling on the league, though regulated, would violate that tenet. He maintains that casinos must take all N.B.A. games off their oddsmakers’ books before Las Vegas could be a viable site.
“There’s only one stumbling block,” Stern said in an interview this week, referring to the legalized betting on N.B.A. games. “It has to be off the books for consideration. It is that, more than any other issue.”
Sanctimony alert! Regulated, legal betting is more of a threat to the game than the wild west of betting everywhere else in the country? I've never really understood that theory. When the Arizona State point-shaving scandal was exposed it was exposed because of the professionalism of the sports books in Las Vegas not exacerbated by it. If the concern is that somehow the gambling will reach inside the game, just take a look at big money tables in every casino this weekend and see if the lack of a team in Vega$ is keeping players from gambling. Stern's owners don't agree with him on this issue, the Times article quotes the Maloofs, Mark Cuban and Rockets owner Les Alexander as being for a team in Sin City.
And it's not like the NBA isn't comfortable with gambling outside of Vega$. Phil Muschnick, in today's Post,
In 1991, during hearings about legalized gambling before the New Jersey legislature in Trenton and a federal legislature in Washington, David Stern testified. His message was clear and soulful: The NBA is vehemently opposed to anything that might encourage kids to link the NBA to gambling.
But since 2000:
* NBA team logos appear on lottery tickets, the NBA having sold licensing and marketing rights to several state lotteries.
* A Connecticut resort-casino became the owner and home of a WNBA team.
* TNT, an NBA TV network, this week from Vegas and in conjunction with the NBA All-Star Game, will sponsor, "Kenny Smith's All-Star Celebrity Poker Challenge Hosted by LeBron James."
* Smith's NBA on TNT studio partner, Charles Barkley, perhaps the NBA's best known TV personality, has a profound gambling problem. Although he claimed to have won $700,000, last week, playing blackjack and betting the Super Bowl in Vegas, he estimates his total gambling losses to be $10 million.
So Stern's plea to lawmakers on behalf of both children and the integrity of his sports wasn't worth a comp to a casino buffet line, was it? When the NBA began to embrace gambling, we asked why. "Times have changed," a spokesperson replied on Stern's behalf.
Could it be that Stern's got no real problem with gambling, he's just got a problem with people not associated with the NBA making money from it? He's not alone in his sanctimony. Roger Goodell is quoted by Liz Robbins in the Times as saying "I have my personal views about gambling, and I don’t think it’s in the best interests of the N.F.L. to have any association with sports betting." Then what's with the league mandated injury reports, Rog? Pro sports has a problem with gambling because there's a dollar and a cent to be made in it and they are cut out of the profits.
Henry Abbott of True Hoop wonders about the history of organized crime in the city, mayor Oscar Goodman was a mob lawyer before going into a truly dirty industry, but is that a bigger concern in Vega$ than it is in Chicago, New York or Boston? With the problems getting arenas built in Seattle, Sacramento and elsewhere, the NBA needs to think about where their teams will be playing in the future. The Association will be hard pressed to find cities with the same demographics, potential for success and willingness to underwrite the construction of an arena than Las Vega$ and whether it is Stern himself or his successor they will be eating crow sooner rather than later when a team suits up for its first game in Nevada.
Man... I sure hope they don't fix the All-Star Game!!! The purity of competition could be compromised!
Posted by: extrapolater | February 12, 2007 at 11:38 AM
I actually did an interview with David Stern for an exclusive story on FlashSportsTonight.com. I found him to be totally full of shit...and himself...as well. Check it out:
http://flashsportstonight.blogspot.com/2007/02/balzac-exclusive-nba-to-exile-all-white.html
Posted by: Anita Balzac | February 12, 2007 at 06:48 PM
Wow. It never ceases to amaze me how insane this country is sometimes. I still can't get over the fact how all forms of online gambling are supposed to be illegal except for horses and state lotteries (I can understand lotteries, since the government gets a cut, but horse racing? Talk about fixing there...) Now I find out all the stuff the NBA is doing, Mr. David "clean image" Stern? Wow. Some people, man. Some people.
And Vegas totally needs a team. If only they could have gotten the old Portland Blazers to go out there, the stories we could have been privileged to hear about...
Posted by: CollegeBoy | February 12, 2007 at 11:14 PM