Viva Las Vegas: Why is the Dallas Mavericks’ training camp in Sin City?

Forty-five years ago, the Mavericks held their inaugural training camp in North Dallas at, of all places, Royal Haven Baptist Church.

The basketball court was only 86 feet long, eight feet shy of NBA regulation, and anyone who drove full-speed for a layup risked bonking face-first into a wall. It’s a stark contrast to where this year’s reigning Western Conference champion Mavericks will spend part of their training camp, specifically Oct. 1-4, on the UNLV campus in so-called Sin City.

So far as anyone in the Mavericks organization can recall, it’s only the third time in franchise history that the team will train outside of Dallas. The first occurred in 1993, when training camp was in Waco.

The second was last year, when the first two practice days were in Dallas and the next 16 days were spent in Abu Dhabi and Madrid. Last year’s trip proved to be so positive for team bonding that Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison and coach Jason Kidd decided that Las Vegas would offer similar bonding with less road wear and tear.

It doesn’t hurt that Las Vegas is home to Sands Corp., where Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont is COO.

“That’s something that I leave to Nico; in Nico we trust,” Dumont told The News during a visit to Dallas this week. “We’re very excited about what’s been going on in the off-season,” Dumont added. “We think we have a great team, a great roster, very focused. They’ve been working hard, from what I understand. And what better place to kick it off than in Las Vegas?”

Indeed, it isn’t Waco. No offense to that fine city, but the Mavericks aren’t looking to follow the path of the Quinn Buckner-coached 1993-1994 team, which started 2-39 and finished with 13 wins. Whatever happened in Waco should have stayed in Waco.