Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

From the editor: Sports arena, team would bring sense of community to Vegas

Is there any better feeling than an entire city’s heart beating as one in support of its team? No, there’s not.

Richard Perez-Feria

Richard Pérez-Feria

VEGAS INC Coverage

My very first memory on this planet is of my dad and me at Boston’s legendary Fenway Park. This quintessential American picture postcard moment is alive inside me in every way even though I hadn’t yet celebrated my second birthday. I remember everything from that day—the large, noisy crowd, the players running around in their impossibly white uniforms, how strong my father’s hand felt in mine. But, mostly, I remember the grass. Green. Fragrant. And I remember feeling happy. And I was.

A few years later, my family moved to Miami just in time for my dad to once again fill my childhood highlight reel by taking me to Miami Dolphins games at the Orange Bowl. Every Sunday there we were rooting for our beloved team as they embarked on what became their historic undefeated season. The following year, dad and I were right there again waving our white hankies alongside more than 70,000 fans as our impressive Dolphins again won every home game. And, just like the year before, the Dolphins won another Super Bowl. Life was good.

On the first Monday Night Football game of the following season, the Dolphins were playing against hated rivals the Oakland Raiders. With heavy rains falling, my mom wouldn’t let me go to the game because I was sick with a cold. For the first time in more than two years, I had missed a Dolphins home game. We lost. I blamed my mom for several years after that because I just knew my absence was the sole reason we lost that game. Such is the hold that sports have on me. Unbreakable.

As the debate rages on and on about when or even if Las Vegas will get a state-of-the-art arena to attract one or more professional sports teams to our great city, I keep harking back to my own connectedness to the places whose teams I root for. I was born in Boston and one thing I know for sure is that I’ll die—many decades from now—a Red Sox fan. Same goes for the Dolphins. For me, sports are a delicious sensory overload piñata. A drug. And I want more.

Las Vegas has a bit of that drug, too, and it comes out in force when the UNLV basketball team is in action. It’s difficult to understand for this unabashed sports lover how Las Vegas, a legitimate big sports town, doesn’t have a professional team of its own. Crazy, I tell you. The idea of a pro team calling Las Vegas home is incredibly seductive and tantalizing. Close your eyes and imagine the heart-racing bedlam as our team challenges for a spot in the playoffs. Is there any better feeling than an entire city’s heart beating as one in support of its team? No, there’s not.

So we went looking for answers in this week’s cover story and asked unrivaled conversationalist and bon vivant chronicler of truth, John Katsilometes, to find out what exactly the problem is in getting a sports arena—any sports arena—built in Las Vegas. His conclusion may surprise you.

Here’s my wish: I want some not-yet two-year-old kid in Las Vegas to have a beautiful sports-related memory with his dad as I had with mine. Being a sports fan brings out the very best in each of us and in our city. All I want for Las Vegans is what I’ve been blessed with my whole life: something to root for. You know, hope.

I don’t care how old I get but when I walk in to a sports arena to this day, I’m still that two-year-old kid holding my dad’s hand at Fenway. And I’m happy.

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