The NHL is in the spotlight in Las Vegas this weekend with its annual player draft taking place at the Sphere; a new twist in efforts to bring an NBA franchise to the region is also drawing attention.
The energy drink company is the only one that needs to bring an NBA team to Southern Nevada. Los Angeles Lakers player LeBron James has expressed interest in owning a team in Las Vegas, as has television commentator and former league player Shaquille O’Neal.
Both cities have enjoyed NBA teams. In Sattle, the SuperSonics, named for the region’s aviation industry, spent 41 seasons in the city before moving to Oklahoma City at the end of the 2007–08 season, becoming the Thunder.
Las Vegas also hosted NBA games during the normal season. In the early 1980s, the Utah Jazz played regular-season “home” games in the UNLV campus arena.
While this continues, two multimillion-dollar NBA-quality stadiums are being discussed in Southern Nevada. One of the proposed stadiums would be at the northern end of the Gaza Strip, near the Sahara Hotel and Casino, where a water park once stood. The other would be south of the airport, at Las Vegas Boulevard and Blue Diamond Road, where a high-speed exercise station is planned.
If one or any of those stadiums are built, they would be part of two major sports facilities built in recent years: Allegiant Stadium west of the Strip, near the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, and the T-Mobile Arena on the Strip. close to MGM Park and New York City. -New York Resorts.
The NFL’s Vegas Raiders play home games at Allegiant Stadium, while the Vegas Golden Knights, winners of the 2023 NHL Stanley Cup, play at T-Mobile Arena. (Although most of the Strip’s major resorts are outside the city limits of Las Vegas, the entire domain is commonly referred to as Las Vegas. )
Even as an NBA team, the valley is cementing its top sporting profile, with back-to-back WNBA champions the Las Vegas Aces already playing there and MLB’s Oakland Athletics going down that road.
The A’s plan is to play their home games at a Major League Baseball stadium to be built on the site of the Tropicana Hotel and Casino on the east side of the Strip, near the airport. The closure of the Tropicana in April 2024 is reminiscent of a time when the complex, first opened in 1957, was connected to the mafia. During the 1970s, for example, Kansas City’s Civella criminal ring used a cheeky agent named Joe Agosto to divert a tax-free casino revenue stream from the Tropicana, an illicit procedure called “skimming. “
The Oakland Athletics are expected to begin play at Tropicana Stadium in time for the 2028 season. Until then, the A’s plan is to finish the existing season in Oakland before gambling at a minor league park in Sacramento until the Las Vegas stadium is built. .
These developments are in line with the message promoted by MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle and others that Las Vegas is no longer “Sin City” but the “sports and entertainment capital of the world,” with primary groups drawing giant crowds and events. such as the recent Formula 1 race that brought the world’s attention to the region.
This shift in public belief contrasts sharply with the years when sports groups refrained from attending Las Vegas because of its reputation as a crowded gambling city. However, with the expansion of legal sports and casinos across the country, that symbol has softened, as leagues have now aligned themselves with sports corporations and embraced Las Vegas, adding this weekend’s NHL Draft in the Sphere.
The city’s current transition has generated mixed reactions: some praise the economic boost provided by the sports capital’s symbol and others are dissatisfied with the increased traffic and higher costs on the Strip.
In a recent comment on KTNV-TV’s Facebook page, a reader known as Cody Culver, addressing one of the proposed NBA zones in the valley, noted that the structure would lead to the creation of more jobs and tourists, “thus boosting the economy. “”
“People want the entire Las Vegas lifestyle to depend on other people coming here and spending money,” he wrote. “We want great events and for large numbers of people to come here to thrive and survive. »
A reader known as Phuc Tuelve had another point of view.
“Las Vegas has been able to generate profits from tourism without sports teams,” he writes. “At this point it is only a nuisance for the population. “