Columnist Dean Juipe: Rattlers, ABA hampered by their own indifference

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2003 | 10:09 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Teams need publicists and leagues need publicity machines, and the Las Vegas Rattlers and the American Basketball Association have, in effect, neither.

As a result, both come across as indisputably second rate.

Want to find out when the Rattlers are playing? Want to know who's on the team? Want to check on the league standings or see the results of its games?

Unfortunately, both the Rattlers and the ABA are so deep into the minor leagues that neither one has given much thought to providing the most basic of factual information.

The ABA can't get its results or standings, let alone game stories, on the Associated Press wire service (almost certainly because it hasn't even tried), and the Rattlers play in a vacuum with neither Las Vegas newspaper committed to running so much as their scores.

Until an e-mail release with a few vagaries showed up in the Sun offices Tuesday, no one here had heard much more than a whisper from the Rattlers' front office through the first month of the team's existence. They refuse to advertise, they apparently don't like to correspond and their league's website is habitually out of date.

And yet, after seeing the Rattlers play the Juarez Gallos (or Fighting Roosters) Monday night at the old Las Vegas SportPark on E. Sunset, I left with the realization that the franchise, with just a token effort and better direction, could succeed in spite of its many other shortcomings. The 500 or so fans who were there were at least moderately entertained.

But I had been forewarned. I had been told in no uncertain terms that I would hate it, that I would detest the loud music and the insidious running commentary over the p.a. system as the game was in progress.

Well, I didn't like it. But it wasn't quite as unbearable as I had been led to believe.

Ever see the TV show "Streetball" on ESPN? The Rattlers' games are just like that, with players trying to showboat and an obnoxious guy with a microphone allowed to roam the sidelines and assault your senses with his opinions on the game.

He's like a radio broadcaster given a free rein to say whatever he feels whenever he likes and to summon up some loud music as a backdrop whenever he sees a need. This, most assuredly, is not your father's ABA.

This is the third incarnation of the ABA and only the first one was a success, let alone a delight. It began in 1967 with 11 teams committed to battling the National Basketball Association and it did just that, eventually merging with the older league much as the fledgling World Hockey Association merged with the National Hockey League around the same time.

ABA No. 2, or ABA 2000 as it was called, was a short-lived endeavor that had a team in Las Vegas for a while. That team was professionally run and played to small gatherings at the Cox Pavilion before succumbing to apathy and the financial wear and tear.

The same fate is apt to befall the Rattlers, who play in a bus league that is one step above the semi-pro level.

Their home, the otherwise deserted SportPark, is now called Sports Center Las Vegas yet it remains dimly lit and is lacking such bare necessities as locker rooms. Only a curtain separates the underprivileged players from spectators or roaming reporters, as I played the role of spy and listened in as the Gallos' bilingual coach addressed his team in what passed for their "locker room" prior to the game.

The SportPark may have been a $40 million project when it was built, but it wasn't meant to house a basketball team. And a hardwood court is out of the question, the Rattlers settling for some sort of plastic compound.

I talked to a fellow who had seen each of the Rattlers' four home games and he said the caliber of play was disappointing, that none of the games had started on time and that the number of referees per game had already been reduced from three to two.

He also said he was there because he liked basketball but that almost everyone else who was there had come to see the Rattlers' star player, Percy Miller, aka rapper Master P. He's the drawing card, maybe even the team's reason for being.

The crowd he and the team did attract was heavy on girls dressed to pose and good-sized guys who eyed the players with a certain amount of envy, as if they could easily trade places with them. I wouldn't doubt for a minute that a team could be thrown together from those in the audience and give the Rattlers a game.

Maybe that's why such a basic necessity as a roster is neither distributed to the fans as they enter nor readily available to a stray member of the media. If the players (other than Miller) are, indeed, interchangeable, why bother printing a roster or promoting anything beyond the actual experience of the game?

Well, call me old school but I want a roster. I want to see who's playing. I want to see the team's results, its box scores and the league standings in the paper.

Failing to come across those things or have that information handed to me, I have no choice but to see the Rattlers and the ABA for what they presently seem to be: much too minor-league for their own good, a passing franchise in a passing league that could succeed if only each did the minimum and got a few people with media and marketing skills involved.