Monday A Wrap For NBA Summer League In Las Vegas As Miami Heat Beat Memphis In OT For Summer Title
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
It’s not like Las Vegas has an NBA team.
Yet.
But NBA Commissioner Adam Silver likes to call the Las Vegas Summer League the Association’s 31st franchise.
And the 11-day basketball Woodstock wrapped up its annual stay at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center with its final game Monday — a matchup between the young players of the Miami Heat and Memphis Grizzlies. It was year 20 for the event that brings together the world’s pro basketball industry for everything from scouting players to checking out new NBA tech developments to holding business classes on salary caps.
Albert Hall, one of the NBA Summer League’s organizers along with his summer league business partner Warren LeGarie, said the annual July event has become a sports destination in Las Vegas driving tourism, hospitality and entertainment dollars to the Vegas economy.
The public LVCVA tourism agency (Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority) board even recently approved spending $1.2 million in sponsorship dollars for the NBA Summer League.
Back in the day, the Summer League in Las Vegas had a humble start. But now the hoops extravaganza is the planet’s hub for pro basketball every July in Vegas where former players and coaches mingle with fans, agents and team staffers in a relaxed setting that has the laidback atmosphere of Major League Baseball spring training.
Let’s take a look at attendance:
— July 12, 17,500
— July 13, 17,103
— July 14, 13,621
— July 15, 14,306.
— July 16, 9,242
— July 17, 9,482
— July 18, 11,012
— July 19, 8,798
— July 20, 8,954
— July 21, 7,882
— July 22, 8,320
In 2023, the NBA Summer League had an attendance of 136,623.
After Monday’s attendance was announced at 8,320, the 11-day attendance total hit 126,220 Monday. The Heat took the tourney title, defeating Memphis in OT tonight.
The NBA Summer League is one of two major annual multi-day sports events hosted by the Thomas & Mack center. The other event could not be more different — the ten-day National Finals Rodeo (NFR) that sells out nightly and draws nearly 170,000 fans to the arena facility that is home to UNLV’s men’s and women’ basketball teams.
