Le Basketbawl

Friday the “Las Vegas Sun” reported that the city of Las Vegas is making an all out push to get themselves an NBA franchise. According to reports the city is now on the fast track to building a 20,000 seat sports arena downtown with the goal of getting an NBA team to play there. Mayor Oscar Goodman told reporters that the City Council will meet next week to discuss a possible deal with The Cordish Companies to build a facility.

The Mayor told reporters that The Cordish Companies is all ready to undertake this project. Goodman said “These are serious people. These are not people who are operating on a wing and a prayer. Cordish has a proven track record. They don’t have time to play games. They always said that they loved Vegas, they love the idea of the entertainment complex, the arena and a hotel on the site where we are now at city hall. They’re taking this very seriously … I don’t think they would be wasting their time unless they were very, very serious.”

The main question is at this point is “If they build it will they come?” First of all New York Vinnie does not believe that the NBA should expand past the current amount of teams. If you do you water down the product too much. You only have a certain number of All-Star players in any given era; the more teams you have the less teams with a superstar on the roster.

So that would mean relocating a current team; the Sacramento Kings quickly come to mind. There has been on and off talk over the last couple of seasons about the Grizzlies moving from Memphis and the Hornets leaving the “Big Easy” However let us not forget the city of Seattle and how much they want a replacement for the Sonics.

The other major factor in any move to Vegas would be the sports books and how the NBA would have to deal with that. Certainly if a team locates to Vegas they would not be on the sports books; but if you put an NBA team in Vegas should there still be gambling allowed on NBA games? New York Vinnie believes that is just asking for trouble. If you put an NBA team in Las Vegas New York Vinnie strongly believes you then have to stop any betting in casinos on any NBA contests. Would the casinos be ready to give up that revenue?

This is not going to happen overnight if it happens at all. New York Vinnie thinks there are too many barriers especially after the Donaghy scandal for the NBA to go to that market. But strange things happen all the time in this day and age. You can never count anything out!