Las Vegas Nets 2007 NBA All-Star Festivities

In a news conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center this morning, National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern announced that the league has picked Las Vegas as the site for the weeklong NBA All-Star festivities in 2007.

Those events will be highlighted by the league's annual All-Star Game, at the Thomas & Mack Center, in February 2007. It will be the first time the midseason showcase game will be played in a city that does not have an NBA franchise.

"For the week of the All-Star events," Stern said this morning, "this will be a merger between the basketball capital of the world and the event capital of the world. We are looking forward to what will particularly be one of the best All-Star celebrations of all time."

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban hailed Stern's decision.

"It was just good business," Cuban wrote in an e-mail to the Sun. "It just confirms that Las Vegas is a thriving destination with a great local population that loves sports."

A three-point shootout and dunk contest will also take place at the 18,500-seat Thomas & Mack Center, and a Jam Session and interactive fan festival will be at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center and the property's 12,000-seat Events Center.

"There's so much more than the game itself," said UNLV basketball coach Lon Kruger, who spent nearly three seasons coaching the Atlanta Hawks and part of one season as an assistant coach for the New York Knicks.

"People in town should have a great time. It will be another huge event that the people of Las Vegas, and others around the NBA, will enjoy. I don't know any city that does such a great job with conventions and events, so it should be a very, very good fit."

The official announcement capped a heady stretch in which Las Vegas has made major-sports headlines, after a private group's effort, throughout 2004, to lure the Montreal Expos to the city and Major League Baseball's recent announcement that its 2008 winter meetings will be in Las Vegas.

The Expos were relocated to Washington, D.C., before the 2005 season.

The awarding of All-Star 2007 to Southern Nevada was not a well-kept secret, as various news organizations over the past week cited sources who confirmed that Las Vegas had secured the bid.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority last month submitted a $4.5 million offer for the game, for site fees, tickets and other expenses, to NBA headquarters in New York.

LVCVA President and Chief Executive Rossi Ralenkotter believes the event will draw $27 million in nongaming revenue to the city.

Houston will play host to next season's All-Star Game. Memphis, Tenn., was believed to be among a group of cities that jousted for the 2007 event, and Stern reportedly is considering Paris as a venue in 2008 or 2009.

Joe and Gavin Maloof, who run the Sacramento Kings for Maloof Sports and Entertainment, sprang the idea of Vegas playing host to the NBA All-Star week in early spring.

Mayor Oscar Goodman's favorable response led George Maloof, a former UNLV football player and president of the Palms, to contact assorted hotel owners and executives, who agreed not to take bets on the game in their sports books if the city were awarded it.

The NBA demanded that stipulation. In April, Goodman said there "was no hesitancy" on the part of hotel and casino brass to take the game off the board. The Nevada Gaming Commission approved that restriction in June.

Cuban called the Maloof brothers "great ambassadors for the NBA and Vegas" for the major roles they played in coaxing the NBA to bring its elite game to the city.

The NBA also procured all 30 suites, which it uses to entertain team owners and other VIPs, inside the Thomas & Mack Center. Tenants accepted either $500 or one lower-level ticket for each All-Star event to be staged at the arena for each seat inside their usual suite.

The game will be shown to a worldwide television audience of more than 200 countries. In the United States, most of its events will be telecast on cable networks ESPN and TNT.

Cuban was blunt when asked what locals can expect from the midseason extravaganza.

"All-Star weekend," he wrote, "you won't come home without an amazing story to tell."

Goodman said today's announcement is "a giant step" toward Las Vegas getting a major professional sports franchise.

However, Goodman said he would not support a change in laws or policies that would take every game of a particular sport off the betting boards of licensed Las Vegas sports books as a condition of getting a pro sports team.

Goodman, at his weekly news conference Thursday, said, however, he would be willing to support a change that would prohibit betting in legal books on a Las Vegas-based team. He called that a "reasonable compromise."

Getting the NBA All-Star Game is "a giant step toward accomplishing my dream," Goodman said Thursday, noting that dream is not just for a pro basketball team, but also for a Major League Baseball squad, a National Football League franchise or a National Hockey League team.

Goodman said that Las Vegas' securing of the 2007 NBA All-Star Game also should not be interpreted as Stern softening his stance against putting an NBA team in a city that has licensed sports books.

Goodman said that while he believes Stern has "no problem with" legalized gambling, he is nevertheless "enforcing the NBA's historical perspective" to not allow a team to be based in a city that has legalized sports betting.

Goodman said he hopes that Stern being in town during the week of the All-Star festivities "will soften" him on that issue.

"He is a reasonable man ... and reasonable men can work things out," Goodman, an attorney who gained fame representing purported underworld figures, said, paraphrasing a line from the film "The Godfather."