Hal Rothman is skeptical of the NBA All-Star Game leading to a team putting down roots in Las Vegas

Sunday, Feb. 26, 2006 | 8:21 a.m.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman stole the show at last week's NBA All-Star weekend, but my guess is that all his efforts got us no closer to having a major sports team in Las Vegas.

Goodman is right: A major-league baseball, basketball or football team would be the icing on the local and regional cake, proof positive that Las Vegas has truly arrived.

But I don't think that NBA Commissioner David Stern will relent anytime soon. While Goodman and Stern have a much closer relationship than ever before, a lot of risks remain for both sides.

The hardest thing for a professional sports league is to be the first to locate in Las Vegas. Although they all point to sports betting as they demure, the reasons are more complicated.

Locating here breaks a taboo, and professional sports organizations are not generally the most creative or willing to take risks. Professional sports leagues are small clubs, and it takes rare mavericks to change the culture of such organizations.

The NBA has people who could do that, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Sacramento Kings owner George Maloof, prominent among them. But lacking personalities such as the acerbic Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis or the megalomaniacal Indianapolis Colts owner Robert Irsay - the two owners who nearly overturned the status quo in the NFL in the 1980s - the necessary groundswell is unlikely. Television money makes people conservative. Risk is one thing - incredibly expensive and foolish risk quite another.

NBA basketball is not a great fit for Las Vegas. This is a basketball town, true, but the distractions here, and the urgency about them, diminish every other party town in the United States. Ever wonder why New Orleans, the "city that care forgot, where everybody parties a lot," never won a title in any sport?

The NBA is a styler's league, populated by immature and callow youngsters who embrace excess as a way of life. It's barely about basketball anymore - flash and show dominate. They may love the game, but they love the nightlife considerably more.

Any owner who placed a team here would be running unusual risks. In Las Vegas, the only restraint comes from within. These days, few NBA players demonstrate that ability.

It would only be a matter of time until a video of somebody's $50 million investment stumbling out of a strip club at 9 a.m. on game day hit the 5 o'clock news. When that happened, it would confirm every bad stereotype about Las Vegas ... and the NBA.

For Las Vegas, the risks are equally great. I have said it before and I will say it again: Visitors will not fill the seats for a Las Vegas team. The premium on any individual NBA or Major League Baseball game - hockey doesn't count and the NFL is another story - simply isn't great enough to bring visitors to town, much less to the stadium.

And what stadium? Even though the WNBA has a team located in a casino in Connecticut, the NBA simply would not allow that. The Thomas & Mack Center does not have 41 dates to give, and there are no other venues outside casinos that the NBA would deem worthy.

Public financing for an arena is out of the question. Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, would see to that. Las Vegas could not afford the half-billion dollars such an arena would cost, and in this day and age, no owner moves his team without sugar from the new location.

Even though greater Las Vegas is now big enough to support a team, it would still be a hard sell. A team needs more than 18,000 fans a night. The town only backs winners.

To become an entertainment option of choice, a Las Vegas franchise must win often and with panache. The city is so new that people here retain their hometown alliances. Converting them takes more than bling - it requires hardware, championship trophies. This is a front-runner's town.

If a team lands here, I will be first in line for season tickets. But even hooking the NBA All-Star game in 2007 does not give me much hope. The NFL can ignore Las Vegas, but the NBA, with its emphasis on cool, cannot.

From the NBA's point of view, the All-Star game is perfect. It satisfies its constituencies, maintains the league's complicated dance with street culture, and promises exactly nothing. David Stern would not have it any other way.

Hal Rothman is a history professor at UNLV. His column appears Sunday.