Ron Kantowski looks at ins and outs of Las Vegas landing sports franchise

Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007 | 7:01 a.m.

Remember that scene in "Risky Business" where Bill Rutherford, the Princeton recruiter, drops in on Joel Goodsen, played by a youthful Tom Cruise, to talk about the latter's Ivy League aspirations - on the same night the enterprising Joel has turned his parents' surburban home into a den of iniquity that would make the Minxx strip club look like the local VFW lodge?

"Looks like the University of Illinois," young Joel tells his, um, sophisticated gal pal Rebecca De Mornay, sensing that ol' Bill Rutherford is not as impressed by De Mornay's sophisticated gal pals as Joel's pent-up high school chums.

Turns out he was wrong. At the end of the movie, Joel's mom finds a crack in her artsy-fartsy egg and Joel's dad, relaying a conversation he has just had with Rutherford, proudly tells his son that "Princeton can use a guy like Joel," and that sometimes you've just got to say "what the heck."

The NBA All-Star Game has passed without anybody getting killed (although it was touch-and-go for a while there in the wee hours of the morning after). And without anybody leaving Dianne Bock Stern, the wife of the commissioner, stranded on a curb at McCarran International Airport. That would be in contrast to what the dim bulbs at UNLV did to Joanne Pitino when they were courting her hubby, Rick, to become the Rebels' basketball coach.

So it can be said that Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is the new Joel Goodsen. Instead of distancing himself and our city from the things our parents warned us about, the mayor used them like a free pull on a giant slot machine to lure Stern and his constituents to town.

So unless the good commissioner, as the mayor calls him, is playing us like Wayne Newton's banjo to get the Maloofs a new arena in Sacramento, Stern and the NBA owners just might be the new Bill Rutherford.

At some point - a year from now, three years from now, five years from now, when the Celtics have a renaissance - they will conclude their fraternity can use a guy like Oscar, because they don't have a problem with free pulls or comped Blue Man Group tickets or whatever else we're using to entice them.

It would be consistent with what they do. The NBA likes to put teams in smaller markets where they are, or at least were, the only game in town. Phoenix, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Portland, San Antonio, Memphis, Orlando, Charlotte, Indianapolis that's almost a third of the league. Plus, the NBA has remained loyal to Milwaukee, another 12-ounce hamlet among 16-ounce metropolitan behemoths in places such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

By now, the obstacles to putting a team here have become more familiar than the lyrics to "Viva, Las Vegas," even if The Wayner doesn't belt them out like he used to. Gambling, arena financing, questionable support among casino executives and the locals, who, at least when the Celtics are in town, would have to be dragged out of the neighborhood casinos to buy a seat in the balcony if pro basketball is gonna fly.

But as for adding the potential for violence to that complicated mix, I wouldn't. For a powder-keg event like the All-Star Game, maybe. For a midweek game between the Trailblazers and the Oscars, I highly doubt it.

I've heard from craps dealers and cab drivers and saw a television report where the staff at Coco's coffee shop was upset because some NBA fans left without paying their bill. (As a co-worker joked, he's eaten at Coco's and thought about skipping out on the check, too.)

Then you read about the postgame trouble and people who may or may not have been in town for the game getting shot at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And the impulse is to jump to the conclusion that the presence of an NBA team would turn the Strip into a gantlet that not even Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke could negotiate without absorbing a flesh wound or two.

Those people are quick to denounce the hip-hop culture the NBA has embraced. I'm sure there are critics who will blame some guy sporting bling and baggy clothes for Southwest employees sleeping in on Monday morning and slowing NBA fans from getting out of town. But let the record show I've seen soccer games and been to rock concerts that got out of hand without a DJ scratching on a record.

It's just the world in which we live where, sad to say, people of all colors and creeds and nationalities have proven they are quite capable of acting like fools.

So sometimes, if you're one whose life won't be complete without major league sports, you've just got to say "what the heck" when a few unruly guests crack your artsy-fartsy egg. Or stay out of the strip clubs at 5 a.m.