Columnist Dean Juipe: Allen says new team has no shot

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Dec. 14, 1999 | 10:24 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@vegas.com or 259-4084.

Having coached a Las Vegas franchise in an upstart professional basketball league, Sonny Allen is all too aware of the inherent pitfalls.

So when he called Monday from his home in Reno to check on the status of the Las Vegas Silver Bandits of the new International Basketball League, Allen had an inkling of what he was about to hear.

He wasn't surprised by the doomsday forecast.

"It's been proven a million times, hasn't it?" he asked rhetorically. "Las Vegas is not a good market for minor-league entertainment."

Allen coached the Las Vegas Silver Streaks for two of their three World Basketball League seasons, and won the league title in the debut season of 1988. While the caliber of play wasn't bad and the Streaks went 90-54 with a roster that included ex-Rebels Freddie Banks, Anthony Jones and Mark Wade, neither the team nor the league was ever a rousing financial success and both capitulated in 1991.

"I don't know what else we could have done," Allen reflected. "We had an exciting team that consistently won and it was stocked with a number of local players.

"But eventually it all comes down to attendance and interest, and I don't think a team can succeed in Las Vegas unless the bigwigs from the casinos get behind it."

The Silver Bandits have neither casino support nor local ownership. They played one game at the Thomas & Mack Center before setting forth on a 10-game road trip that has already ruined their record.

"I can't imagine any new leagues coming into Las Vegas and making it," Allen said. "It amazes me that they still even try.

"I'm just glad that it's not my money."

While the IBL already has a commitment to Las Vegas, another new league -- the New ABA, it's called -- has quietly revealed it will place one of its eight franchises in Las Vegas for a season scheduled to open next November. Add in the Collegiate Professional Basketball League that's also on the drawing board, as well as the United States Basketball League and the Continental Basketball Association that has been in existence since 1946, and there's enough minor-league basketball in this country to choke a boa constrictor.

"As a coach, I'm happy for all of these new opportunities," said Allen, who currently coaches the Sacramento franchise in the Women's National Basketball Association. "But every team in each of those new leagues is being stocked with players not good enough to play in the CBA. It's hard to see how any of them will make it."

While the CBA boasts that it has sent 515 players to the National Basketball Association in the past 20 years, players in the IBL are contractually restricted from making that move during the course of a given season.

"That's crazy," Allen said.

As for the IBL in Las Vegas, a spokesman for the league said the team could survive for three years even if it never sold a ticket, yet Allen wasn't swayed and stuck to his gloomy tone.

"These are outsiders, right?" he said. "Outsiders have no chance of making a minor-league franchise work in Las Vegas.

"They could have saved themselves some money by asking any of us who have already tried."