Maloof: Team in LV would work

Thursday, June 3, 2004 | 9:42 a.m.

As an owner of a Las Vegas hotel and casino and a National Basketball Association team, and a longtime Vegas resident, George Maloof Jr. is uniquely qualified to comment about the city some day landing a major professional sports team.

Few locals are more qualified to talk about the subject.

Maloof even said he would attend major league baseball games inside a proposed $420 million, 40,000-seat stadium, should baseball executives choose to relocate the troubled Montreal Expos to Las Vegas.

"Oh yeah," Maloof said. "I'm not a big baseball fan. But, sure, I'd go. People would go. That's one thing about Las Vegas, our community doesn't stay home much. We always have people in town visiting and we always go out, very few people stay home.

"It would be one more option."

Washington, D.C., several sites in Virginia and Portland, Ore., are among the suitors battling Las Vegas for the Expos, and MLB commissioner Bud Selig expects to resolve the team's relocation odyssey this summer.

When pressed about the feasibility of Las Vegas supporting a major league team, Maloof factored in baseball's revenue-sharing system and arrived at a quick answer.

"Yeah, I think so," he said. "I think so."

Maloof, 39, left Albuquerque for Las Vegas, to study hotel management at UNLV and play football for the Rebels, in 1985. In one, he excelled. In the other, he had a short career.

Although he earned letters on the football team in 1986 and '87, the former defensive back said his standout moment for the Rebels occurred when he popped teammate and future NFLer Ickey Woods, a running back, in practice.

"It made the paper," Maloof said. "It was a final spring game, and I pretty much recognized the play before it started. I knew where the ball was going, and I ran as fast and as hard as I could. The ball was pitched to Ickey, and I laid him out.

"That was my only claim to fame. I pretty much only played on special teams."

The hotel and casino business has been Maloof's special talent, fueled by a work ethic that grandfather Joe, a Lebanese immigrant, developed when he started a general store in a small New Mexico town in the 1890s.

George Sr. continued that trait by expanding the general store into a statewide liquor distributorship. By the time Senior died of a heart attack, at 56, in 1980, the Maloof empire included all the branches of a New Mexico bank and the Houston Rockets of the NBA.

After Junior graduated from UNLV, he persuaded brothers Joe, Gavin and Phil, and the rest of the family, to build and run a casino, then called the Fiesta, in North Las Vegas.

Three years ago, the Maloofs sold the Fiesta for $185 million, and George quickly turned his idea for the hip Palms, which celebrated its second anniversary last November, into reality.

In 1997, the Maloofs bought the NBA's Sacramento Kings and the Arco Arena for $247 million. To appease NBA commissioner David Stern, the Palms does not post betting lines, or odds, on pro basketball games.

"The NBA isn't wild about Las Vegas," George Maloof Jr. said. "They never have been."

When the Maloofs bought the Kings, the NBA immediately ordered Maloof to drop its games from the Fiesta sports book.

"But I can tell you, I haven't given up," Maloof said. "Every time I'm in New York, I either ask David Stern or (deputy commissioner) Russ Granik if we can put the NBA back on our book (at the Palms) and the answer is always no.

"They have a certain perception about gambling, and I don't see it changing. What they would want (for Vegas to have an NBA team) is for every casino to take the NBA off its sports book, and I don't know if there's any motivation there from the casinos' standpoint."

Maloof said an NBA team would receive magnificent support in Las Vegas.

"To me, the best candidate would be a basketball team," he said. "I've been here for 20 years, and I remember the Rebels from the old days, when we were good. We had tremendous support. I think basketball would be great for Las Vegas."

Maloof noted that the NFL's deep acrimony with Las Vegas and the NHL's looming labor issues don't make those leagues candidates to place a franchise in the city anytime soon.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman also acknowledged an ongoing rift with the NFL and commissioner Paul Tagliabue. Goodman told the Philadelphia Daily News that comments by NFL officials about Las Vegas have been bitter, but that he hoped his comments about the NFL "are twice as bitter."

"One of these days," Goodman told the Daily News, "Mr. Tagliabue and I are going to sit down and have a talk."

Thus, baseball seems to be the sport most likely to first test the Vegas major pro sports market.

In April, Selig told the Philadelphia Inquirer, "there are a whole lot of hurdles out there, but Las Vegas is a viable consideration."

After a quarterly owners meeting in New York two weeks ago, Selig called a 100-page-plus proposal by two Las Vegas groups -- Teamscape and the Las Vegas Sports and Entertainment Co., LLC -- "aggressive" and "impressive."

It included a plan for a retractable-roof, glass stadium, to be built with mostly private financing on land behind Paris Las Vegas and Bally's, both properties of Caesars Entertainment Inc.

Caesars would only act as a landlord. Contrary to a recent published report, multiple sources close to the project said Caesars officials are not wavering about taking part in the stadium plan.

The Virginian-Pilot reported that Selig and MLB president and chief operating officer Bob DuPuy downplayed legalized gambling in Las Vegas as an issue.

"You need someone who is real passionate about it," Maloof said. "Oscar Goodman wants a pro team to come to Las Vegas. He's done a lot of good work on it, but he's also running the city and doesn't have time to spend on it.

"Someone has to be completely focused, probably an owner who really wants to come here. You could put it together quickly, though, and I think it could happen."

Maloof said the city's growing population, a rich tourism industry that is expected to lure at least 36 million in '04 and a solid corporate base, which would be tapped for luxury suites and premium-seat season tickets, would support a franchise.

"I think it has great potential," he said. "I think your gate would be strong. I don't think the local television revenue would be strong, but that's moved up significantly in the last five to 10 years. And I don't know if you can overestimate (tourist figures).

"I think we're pretty close. I think the town at some point, and very soon, could support a major sports team."