Columnist Ron Kantowski: MGM keeps tight lip on hockey deal

Thursday, Jan. 20, 2000 | 10:37 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday and Thursday. Reach him at ron@vegas.com or 259-4088.

By now, I was hoping the real reason the MGM Grand decided to bail on hosting an International Hockey League franchise for the 2000-01 season might surface.

Forget about it.

The stodgy MGM surely won't be explaining its position in any detail. The biggest surprise of the year came less than two weeks ago, when the juggernaut resort confirmed the negotiations with the IHL were taking place. Lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice.

Usually, to get any information from the MGM before it is ready to go public with it, you have to possess a grappling hook, one of those little spy cameras and the ability to hang upside down from the ceiling, like Tom Cruise in the movies. Mission Impossible.

Local hockey fans, buoyed by the MGM's apparent interest in the IHL, were all but lining up for season tickets after both parties went public with their implied intentions on Jan. 6. But those negotiations, provided they were taking place, were iced this week.

In hockey parlance, the IHL power play never even reached the MGM blue line.

The Strip hotel on Monday released a one-paragraph statement (attributed to no one) that it was no longer pursuing an IHL tenant for its Grand Garden. There was no explanation, other than the MGM already has a bunch of cool events planned for the Garden next year. Likewise, it didn't say what those events are.

But there are two sides to every story, and so it figured the other party in the negotiations, the IHL, might be a little more forthcoming about what quashed the deal.

Funny, but the IHL didn't even know the deal had been quashed.

League officials were surprised -- make that stunned -- to find out the deal was off when contacted about it on Wednesday. They hadn't seen or even heard about the MGM statement.

Which leads one to believe that this thing was nowhere close to being a "done deal," as per the rumors and reports that began circulating before the holidays.

* MISSING IN ACTION: Kaspars Kambala and Mark Dickel were so good in UNLV's 85-73 victory at New Mexico Monday night that hardly anybody noticed shooting guard Trevor Diggs was God-awful again, at least with his jump shot.

Any notions that Diggs' prolonged shooting slump was a thing of the past clanged off the iron against the Lobos. After making 5-of-12 from the field in a home loss to Brigham Young and 11-of-17 en route to a career-high 28 points in a win at Air Force, Diggs launched a dozen more bricks at The Pit, sinking just 1-of-13 from the floor.

Diggs' field-goal percentage for the season now stands at .329 -- pretty good for the Paleozoic Age, but just plain awful, even by today's modest standards for marksmanship.

But with Kambala rumbling for 32 points and 18 rebounds, Diggs' masonry hardly mattered. It was almost as if the big Latvian's newly shaved head frightened the three Lobos who tried to guard him.

Looking like the diabolical villain Braniac from the Superman comics, Kambala's menacing appearance was a popular topic in more than one Internet chat room following the game.

"He was awesome and unstoppable inside, unlike in the past when he went up against (former New Mexico All-American) Kenny Thomas," wrote one fan. "But I must make one comment regarding Kambala's appearance: Dude, grow your hair back. That kid without question has the ugliest skull in college hoops. It looks like a friggin' cantaloupe."

* NEGATIVE SPIN: Timing is everything and UNLV's was just a little off last weekend. While the Rebels were authoring an impressive Mountain West Conference road sweep of Air Force and New Mexico, the current issue of Sports Illustrated was going to press with a negative mention of the program. It suggested that in the aftermath of the 40-point loss to No. 1 Cincinnati, the Rebels under fifth-year coach Bill Bayno "seem no closer to returning to national prominence than when he started."

The fortunate thing for Bayno and his staff is that the harsh commentary appeared just a page before Rick Reilly's column in the back of the magazine. Perhaps Rebel recruits didn't make it all the way to page 82 before putting SI aside and cranking up the Playstation.

* TYSON'S NEW WHEELS: It's a good thing England and the U.S. are separated by an ocean, because there's no telling what kind of trouble Mike Tyson could get himself into following a shopping spree in London this week.

One of Tyson's purchases was a Formula One race car, and not just any F-1 car. While shopping for an Austin Healey, Tyson became distracted by a sleek McLaren-Mercedes, a copy of the one driven by world champion Mika Hakkinen of Finland. Tyson bought it on the spot -- for an even $1 million U.S. dollars.

It's too bad Iron Mike didn't own the race car when he was tooling around Indianapolis with Desiree Washington. In that it doesn't have a back seat, it might have spared him a lot of grief.

* SENSE AND CENSURE-ABILITY: This item probably won't seem relevant to most race fans, but it does show that not everything NASCAR touches turns to gold. The stock car sanctioning body tried to sneak a proviso onto its season media credential application stating that all materials gathered at a NASCAR race are property of NASCAR.

That means photos and even driver quotes, in addition to all the free stuff the race teams give out.

It also meant that a grisly photo showing three dead spectators lying in a pool of blood -- as per last year's Indy Racing League event at Charlotte Motor Speedway -- couldn't be sold to Sports Illustrated without NASCAR's approval.

Apparently, the press down South is more riled up than fans in the main grandstand after the track runs out of beer. At least one NASCAR official has lost his job over the incident.

* FOR PETE'S SAKE: Pete Rose really must be strapped for cash. Baseball's hit meister has been selected as the new spokesman for MAACO Auto Painting & Bodyworks, and as such, will be guest speaker at MAACO's annual convention Feb. 5-10 at Caesars Palace.

"Like Charlie Hustle, MAACO franchise operators never walk when they can run," states a press release, futilely trying to develop a common bond between baseball's all-time hit king and guys named Frank who paint cars for a living.

Call it a hunch, but if the guys with the spray guns and coveralls were meeting in Pittsburgh instead of Las Vegas, somebody like Merlin Olsen would be addressing their group.

* AROUND THE HORN: So Chris Peters, the former Microsoft executive, quit his bazillion-dollar-a-year job to join/buy the Pro Bowlers tour. In terms of a midlife crisis, you'd probably have to go back to the 1985 movie "Lost in America," in which Albert Brooks quits his job as a successful ad executive to drive a Winnebago across the country, to top it. ... Now that the obscure rock group Twisted Sister has demanded the Braves refrain from playing "I Wanna Rock" when John Rocker sprints in from the bullpen, the song (unlike Rocker) probably will never be heard again. ... And finally, it seems replica soccer jerseys manufactured by Nike for the German club Borussia Dortmund were treated with a harmful agent that is thought to cause infertility. The last we heard, the Knicks were trying to launder Larry Johnson's jersey in the same stuff.

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