Stern softens stance on NBA team in Vegas

[trueD]

Las Vegas Has Got the Game, but It Wants a Team
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/sp...ts&oref=slogin
LAS VEGAS, Feb. 9 — Here, where the fountains dance and the stage lights never go dark, where the cheesy and the risqué mingle alongside celebrities to a soundtrack of slot machines, decadence has found a new friend.

The N.B.A. All-Star Game, the league’s biggest annual party, is about to descend here next weekend. The game, of course, is only an exhibition. But what isn’t in Las Vegas?

For the first time, a non-N.B.A. city will play host to the All-Star Game. Las Vegas, one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas (population: 1.9 million) in the country without a professional sports team, wants to showcase itself as worthy of becoming a full-time major league city.

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.”

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Feb. 11, 2007
NBA All-Star Game: Q&A WITH NBA COMMISSIONER DAVID STERN
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_ho.../12463696.html

R-J: Have you softened your stance, given the education you have received from talking to people in the sports book industry? Or do you just don't want the books taking bets on NBA games?

STERN: "What I've tried to say, and I think I'm going to stop addressing it because you've had enough of me saying it in public, is that it is our policy over a period of time that we haven't located teams where there is basketball betting, period.

"That's the policy, and it was a policy in place when we expanded to British Columbia and Ontario. It was a policy in place when Carnival Cruise Lines had a casino. It was a policy in place when Sheraton-ITT bought the Knicks, and it's a policy in place in respect of an absence of basketball betting at the Palms.

"That's been the consistent application. What it hasn't been is the anti-Las Vegas policy. It was to people who weren't listening, who weren't observing. But it has never been an anti-Las Vegas policy.

R-J: How do you think Las Vegas will do with the All-Star Game? You were confident two years ago when the announcement was made. Has your optimism changed since then?

STERN: "My only concern is whether we'll be able to get people to go into the building because they're going to be distracted by all the wonderful options Las Vegas is going to provide. It's going to be a fun weekend. I think that it puts an exclamation point on the statement that we think Las Vegas is a great place to watch a basketball game. You can put in parentheses 'as long as there's no betting on it.' "

R-J: How does the NBA address getting a new arena for the Kings?

STERN: "We'll have something to say about that in the next day or so."

[trueD]

Stern can foresee NBA in Vegas
BY KEN BERGER
[email protected]
http://www.newsday.com/sports/basket...0,930284.story

"My recommendation to the owners would be, there's only one subject that separates us from considering it," he said. "And that's sports betting."

But Stern didn't reject the idea of removing betting lines only for games involving an eventual Vegas team. "What you're positing is something in the middle," he said. "And that's for the owners to decide."

Stern, who will meet Wednesday in Las Vegas with Mayor Oscar Goodman, cautioned that Las Vegas is "nowhere near" getting an NBA team. But like Goodman, Stern believes holding the All-Star Game there will accelerate the dialogue.

"Of course, they're great hosts," Stern said. "And I'm positive after that there will be initial discussions."

Informed that Stern said he won't stand in the owners' way on the gambling issue, Goodman said, "If that's the case, then that's the best news I've ever heard."

[Fillmoe]

The Las Vegas Kings