Mayor to meet NBA owner on Feb. 24

The eyes of the sports world may have left Las Vegas after a weekend of home-run hitting and ESPY award giving.

But recent developments in the National Basketball Association could refocus local efforts to get a professional sports team.

Mayor Oscar Goodman confirmed Tuesday he will meet later this month with the owner of an NBA team said to be interested in relocating his team to Las Vegas.

"I don't want to breach any confidences or go back on my word by revealing the name," Goodman said. "But I will be meeting with him on the 24th."

At a press conference during the weekend of the NBA all-star game in Oakland, Calif., NBA Commissioner David Stern singled out Las Vegas as the city showing the most interest in having a team.

Stern also made it clear that the future for at least one team, the Houston Rockets, looked bleak in its current home.

"If there's not a new building, I think it's more than probable," Stern said. "I think it's certain that the team will be relocated."

Rockets owner Les Alexander has tried to keep the team in Houston but has said he must have a new arena to replace Compaq Center. In November Houston voters rejected a proposal to fund a downtown arena for both basketball and hockey.

Goodman has received numerous calls from entrepreneurs interested in owning a professional basketball franchise ever since talk began last summer of building a sports arena and performing arts center downtown.

However, the NBA currently has no plans for expansion and has no teams immediately available to move.

Goodman led a local delegation to New York last fall to meet with Stern and ask if the league would permit a team to move to Las Vegas.

"I guess the most recent and well-publicized meeting we had was when Mayor Oscar Goodman led a sort of delegation of government officials to New York where we cleared the air and said that at the current time, as long as Las Vegas has betting on NBA basketball, it's not likely to be seriously considered for an NBA expansion franchise or a team," Stern said Saturday in Oakland.

Goodman has repeatedly downplayed betting as being the stumbling block to an arena. Instead, he has recently focused efforts on how the Nevada Resort Association would view the addition of another arena.

Any new sports arena would be in direct competition with the Thomas & Mack Center, MGM Grand Garden Arena and the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

City Manager Virginia Valentine will be meeting with Manny Cortez, president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, to ask the authority to update a study it conducted last year on the impact a sports arena would have locally.

Goodman suggests that study is needed to persuade the resort association to give ground on the competition issue. Goodman has repeatedly said he thinks the betting issue is "a nonissue."

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