Columnist Dean Juipe: Las Vegas isn’t ready for Grizzlies

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2001 | 10:56 a.m.

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

Perhaps the mayor's office or a citizens' advisory committee should issue a proclamation.

It would open with a "To Whom It May Concern" salutation and it would be direct and to the point.

The missive would impart a few basic facts and one very pertinent conclusion. It would go something like this: "We know your professional sports team is looking for a new home, and we all know Las Vegas has been booming for more than a decade. But please be aware that we are not yet ready to support a professional sports franchise, and, more importantly, we have neither an available arena nor one on the drawing board. Please delete us from consideration."

Had such an edict been on record this week, we could have avoided being linked to still another franchise that's ready to uproot. This time it's the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies who are eying greener pastures, and, as is seemingly always the case, Las Vegas was mentioned as a possible suitor.

But the Grizzlies aren't moving here, and it's for the simplest of reasons: We don't have any place for them to play. (The issue of a pro league like the NBA bypassing Las Vegas for gambling reasons isn't the stumbling block many think it is; compromises are negotiable.)

The Thomas & Mack Center remains a wonderful arena but it houses one full-time winter tenant in the UNLV basketball team and it would not be able to accommodate another. An incoming NBA team would demand complete access to its home arena and the T&M wouldn't be able to comply.

Now, if Las Vegas were the only option for a team such as the Grizzlies, the team could move here and share the T&M with UNLV until a new arena is constructed solely for the pro team. But the Grizzlies have at least four cities expressing interest that already have arenas available, and for that reason New Orleans, St. Louis, Nashville and Anaheim are far more logical contenders to land a Vancouver franchise that has been given the go-ahead by the league to begin packing.

There was a time when we saw this as a chicken-or-the-egg thing and wondered if Las Vegas should build an arena and hope to acquire a team, or acquire a team and then find a way to build an arena. But it has become clear in recent years that the latter option is not viable and that the city will have to build the arena first to have any reasonable hope of acquiring a legitimate pro team.

That's a project many civic leaders would like to see earmarked and under way for that mammoth downtown parcel that sits vacant, but it's one not making much headway by the looks of things. As a result, Las Vegas cannot be taken seriously as a possible site for a franchise relocation at this point in time -- no matter how often the city's name appears in wire stories to the contrary.

In addition, there's the question of how badly the community wants and would support an NBA (or NHL) team. The Grizzlies, for instance, regularly draw 14,000 fans (in a 19,193-seat building) yet they're losing money at a brisk pace and you have to wonder if Las Vegas could do any better.

It would be great to have an NBA team, and getting the youthful Grizzlies would be a coup. But it's just not going to happen.