Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2000 | 11:11 a.m.
Ron Kantowski's column usually appears Thursday. His notes column appears Tuesday. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4088. Regular sports columnist Dean Juipe is on vacation.
So can it be said that Las Vegas finally is ready to serve as permanent host to an NBA franchise?
Well, if the season is one game long and involves the world champion Los Angeles Lakers, you bet it can be said.
Otherwise, don't be misled by the impressive crowd of 17,561 that jammed into the Thomas & Mack Center Monday night to watch the Lakers and Sacramento Kings play a glorified game of H-O-R-S-E that was filed under the heading of NBA preseason game.
We are no more equipped to host a full-time NBA tenant than the Laker Girls are for performing trigonometry functions.
Do I really have to rehash all the reasons why we are years (hopefully not the "light" kind) away from NBA viability?
But why take my word for it? A study just released by Scarborough Sports Marketing, which polled 180,000 adults in 64 top U.S. markets (including Las Vegas), confirms our NBA interest level is way down the list.
Six cities that do not have teams (Louisville, Memphis, Raleigh, Norfolk, Va., Lexington, Ky., and Birmingham) rank ahead of Las Vegas in NBA "avidity" (defined as "very interested in the NBA.") Our avidity rating is 11 percent -- exactly the average of the 64 cities polled.
At least that's better than our interest in Major League Baseball, which is just 13 percent, two points below the national average. Only in football, where Las Vegas ranks a solid 10th among the 64 cities in NFL avidity, do the numbers suggest the interest is sufficient to support a franchise.
Of course, that's only eight home games. Local NBA fans would be wise to resign themselves to seven fewer.
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