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Shop at Jay’s Market at 190 East Flamingo Road at the Koval Lane intersection east of the Strip.
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Story by Alan Snel Photos by J. Tyge O’Donnell
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — After his Bucks defeated the Atlanta Hawks here at T-Mobile Arena Saturday, Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers had a firm prediction.
Rivers, responding to an LVSportsBiz.com postgame question about Las Vegas and the NBA, said Las Vegas will eventually get an NBA franchise.
River joked, though, that Las Vegas should not snag an NBA team from another market.
Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said, “It’s only a matter of time,” that Las Vegas will get an NBA team.
Gilgeous-Alexander, responding to an LVSportsBiz.com postgame question, said Las Vegas has a strong “basketball culture.”
There’s a lot of buzz about Vegas and the NBA, which is staging the NBA Cup’s semifinals today and final Tuesday at T-Mobile Arena.
Attendance for Game 1 Bucks/Hawks was 17,113. Game 2 OKC/Rockets was 17,937. Many fans bought tickets on the secondary market. A local mother brought her two kids with upper bowl tickets and the three got in for slightly less than $200.
The team that wins the NBA Cup cashes in bigtime. Each player makes nearly $515,000 apiece. The Bucks knocked out Atlanta, while the Thunder defeated Houston. It’s Milwaukee and the Freak vs Oklahoma City and SGA at T-Mobile Arena Tuesday.
Bucks assistant coach Darvin Ham was here. He knows the NBA Cup. Ham coached the Lakers in this same arena a year ago when he led Los Angeles to the trophy of this inaugural event.
In Las Vegas, NHL Golden Knights owner Bill Foley said he would welcome a chance to have an NBA team play at T-Mobile Arena.
Foley owns 15 percent of this eight-year-old arena, which was built by the partnership of the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and MGM Resorts International. AEG and MGM Resorts each own 42.5 percent of the arena.
The NBA knows Vegas quite well.
All 30 teams play in the Las Vegas Summer League at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver likes to refer to the annual mid-July summer league event as the “NBA’s 31st franchise.”
MGM Resorts International has long had a close relationship with the NBA. Here is MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle at T-Mobile Arena tonight. MGM Resorts is a former summer league title sponsor.
It’s a sports industry doctrine that sports stadiums and arenas drive teams to Las Vegas and there is no shortage of developers who have voiced proposals for an NBA arena combined with a hotel-casino.
Tim Leiweke’s Oak View Group, which rebuilt the NHL Seattle Kraken’s arena, proposed an arena venue at Las Vegas Boulevard and Blue Diamond Road.
Meanwhile, local developer LVXP submitted a proposed project of an arena and hotel to Clark County.
And Foley is confident he is capable of hosting an NBA team at T-Mobile Arena.
But he learned from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to not predict what a commissioner or league will do until the franchise is a done deal in a market.
Foley said Bettman gave him a tongue lashing about talking too much about Vegas getting a NHL team that he hasn’t experienced since his freshman days at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Foley is a 1967 West Point graduate and now lives here in Vegas.
For now, Las Vegas is serving the NBA and Silver as a nice neutral site market where an NBA event like the Cup semis and final can be held.
Silver will not have a presser this week in Las Vegas. And he’s not very chatty about the idea of Las Vegas and Seattle joining the NBA.
But the funny thing about sports-crazed Las Vegas is that basketball became the market’s go-to team sport with the ascension of the UNLV basketball program to national prominence. It’s likely a reason why SGA referred to Las Vegas’ “basketball culture.”
The NHL Golden Knights arrived in 2017, then the NFL Raiders in 2020, with the MLB Athletics slated to open their stadium on the Strip in 2028.
That would make Las Vegas the smallest TV market to host three so-called “Big Four” sports leagues.
Raiders owner Mark Davis also was in attendance tonight:
The Bucks took game one and the Thunder led by ten points over Houston in the fourth quarter. OKC ultimately took care of business, 111-96.
The court here at T-Mobile Arena did not have the colorful designs seen in the courts at the in-season tournament games leading up to this weekend in Las Vegas. Last year’s court at T-Mobile Arena did have the colorful court surfaces for the inaugural NBA Cup. The NBA wanted to focus on the Cup competition instead of the colorful courts in Year 2 of the NBA Cup.