Vegas and the NBA.... a preview.

[fingpilot]

I was in Vegas all last week. Supposed to leave friday evening.

There was a national real estate brokers convention in town. The smokiest, rudest, pushiest, cheapest, most gawd awful group of people ever to descend onto the strip. I was in the largest hotel on the strip. By wednesday evening, I was about done. The rest of the crew asked to change hotels, somewhere away from the crowd. We were exploring options thursday morning when the passengers called and said they were done, and get us the F outta town.

All week, there had been a daily-increasing fever about the NBA All-Star weekend coming to town. Ads being draped on each and every hotel featuring an NBA star, and some of the drapes were record setters for size. Picture the SpazDik tower completely draped top to bottom. One entire face of the Pyramid with a face.. a very particular face..... Thursday morning, we hear about that face saying, on a live radio interview given while boarding the plane for Vegas, saying he 'hates gays'.... in not so PC terms. The only union more powerful than the teamsters in LAS is the entertainment workers union.....

We (the crew) all assembled in the lobby to a crush of madness.. as NBA 'stars' and wanna-bees were all mobbing the check-in counter...... which was 50 stations wide. We HAD to go there because we were checking out a day early, and could not use the 'express check-out'. A fist-fight broke out in the line next to us. Over who should be the 'bomb MVP'.... The clerk on the other line next to us backed away permanently from the counter when an indecent proposal was offered by the bejeweled 7-foot guest trying to check in.

After we cleared the lobby, there was another 'incident' in the valet car line when another 'guest' and his 'security detail' had an altercation about where his stretch Hummer was going to be parked (not in front of the red carpet) for 3 days.

We got to the airport FBO and watched a steady stream of 'working girls' deplaning from all over the country in private jets. 12 planes of 18 each. Each with a 'security detail', a cell phone in each of his ears. I was surprised at the lack of luggage these girls travelled with. One small roller.

Fast forward to this morning. I am in NYC. The talk in town here is the bedlam in Vegas all weekend, and thru this morning. Police vanishing. Gunfire in the strip clubs and casinos. Unpaid tabs, casinos closing to avoid the madness, 24/7 restaurants closing for the first time in history to avoid the crime, Southwest Airlines having a check-in line that overwhelmed the airport.

The city of LAS is trying to downplay the bedlam. They want an NBA franchise.

Can you imagine?

[legion]

They'll be gone by the end of April, I hope...

[911boost]

My mom always told me that if I couldn't say anything nice, not to say anything at all...

But, do you think if this was the NHL Allstar's the same thing would have happened?

[gprsh924]

I dont know if quite the same thing wouldve happened, but hosting any event in the city that brought in that many people is going to create an increase in violence and crime (regardless of race)

[rsrfan]

Crazy thing is I live here (didn't go on strip this past weekend - wayyy to smart for that) and have heard nothing. By all accounts on the local news, it was business as usual and a nice economic boost for the city.


JP

[fingpilot]

Originally posted by gprsh924
I dont know if quite the same thing wouldve happened, but hosting any event in the city that brought in that many people is going to create an increase in violence and crime (regardless of race)

Sorry to blow your racist charge out of the water, but the following is from todays' Vegas paper....

LAS VEGAS. There have been anecdotal accounts of how dangerous Vegas was this past weekend, and the latest Pacman Jones incident certainly made you wonder. Now, the official numbers are out, and one thing's for sure: Vegas is indeed a tricky place for the NBA to visit. KLAS-TV reports 403 arrests, and a climate of "general rudeness." Jason Whitlock and Bill Simmons both had inklings that it was even worse, but this official line is still pretty startling.

Of course, the city is trying its best to spin this:

Sheriff Doug Gillespie says his officers performed as they should have and prevented total chaos at the NBA events. He calls the weekend a success from a police standpoint.

"The presence of police officers were very instrumental, I believe, in keeping this event as safe as it was," Sheriff Gillespie said.
Uh, okay. I guess "preventing total chaos" is respectable goal for a star-studded, multi-zillion dollar event. Supposedly, "more than half" of the arrests were prostitution-related. And yet one local business owner described the Las Vegas as "filled with an element of violence."

For what it's worth, Gillespie is all for an encore.



Some sports observers weren't quite so positive.....

REAL TALK'S Jason Whitlock writes...

NBA All-Star Weekend in Vegas was an unmitigated failure, and any thoughts of taking the extravaganza to New Orleans in 2008 are total lunacy.

An event planned to showcase what is right about professional basketball has been turned into a 72-hour display of why commissioner David Stern can't sleep at night and spends his days thinking of rules to mask what the NBA has come to represent.

Good luck fixing All-Star Weekend.

The game is a sloppy, boring, half-hearted mess. The dunk contest is contrived and pointless. The celebrity contest is unintended comedy. And, worst of all, All-Star Weekend revelers have transformed the league's midseason exhibition into the new millennium Freaknik, an out-of-control street party that features gunplay, violence, non-stop weed smoke and general mayhem.

Word of all the criminal activity that transpired during All-Star Weekend has been slowly leaking out on Las Vegas radio shows and TV newscasts and on Internet blogs the past 24 hours.

"It was filled with an element of violence," Teresa Frey, general manager for Coco's restaurant, told klastv.com. "They don't want to pay their bills. They don't want to respect us or each other."

Things got so bad that she closed the 24-hour restaurant from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.

"I have been spit on. I have had food thrown at me," she said. "I have lost two servers out of fear. I have locked my door out of the fear of violence."

All weekend, people, especially cab drivers, gossiped about brawls and shootings. You didn't know what to believe because the local newspaper was filled with stories about what a raging success All-Star Weekend was. The city is desperately trying to attract an NBA franchise, and, I guess, there was no reason to let a few bloody bodies get in the way of a cozy relationship with Stern.

Plus, the NBA's business partner ESPN didn't have time to dirty its hands and report on the carnage. I'm sure ESPN's reporters were embedded in the rear ends of the troops -- Shaq, Kobe, King James, D-Wade, AI and Melo.

But there were multiple brawls, at least two shootings, more than 350 arrests and a lot of terror in Vegas over the weekend.

And the police might want to talk to NFL player Pacman Jones about a nasty shooting spree at a Vegas strip club. Jones and the rapper Nelly were allegedly at Minxx Gentlemen's Club Monday morning shortly before (or during) the shooting.

Two victims, male employees of the club, were listed in critical condition at the hospital; a third, a female patron, sustained non-life threatening injuries after being grazed by a bullet.

There were so many fights and so many gangbangers and one parking-lot shootout at the MGM Grand that people literally fled the hotel in fear for their safety. I talked with a woman who moved from the MGM to the Luxor because "I couldn't take it. I'll never come back to another All-Star Game."

There are reports of a brawl between rappers and police at the Wynn Hotel.

Vegas police were simply overwhelmed along The Strip. They were there solely for decoration and to discourage major crimes. Beyond that, they minded their own business.

I was there. Walking The Strip this weekend must be what it feels like to walk the yard at a maximum security prison. You couldn't relax. You avoided eye contact. The heavy police presence only reminded you of the danger.

Without a full-scale military occupation, New Orleans will not survive All-Star Weekend 2008.

David Stern seriously needs to consider moving the event out of the country for the next couple of years in hopes that young, hip-hop hoodlums would find another event to terrorize. Taking the game to Canada won't do it. The game needs to be moved overseas, someplace where the Bloods and Crips and hookers and hoes can't get to it without a passport and plane ticket.

I'm serious. Stern has spent the past three years trying to move his league and players past the thug image Ron Artest's fan brawl stamped on the NBA.

After this weekend, I'm convinced he's losing the battle. All-Star Weekend Vegas screamed that the NBA is aligned too closely with thugs. Stern is going to have to take drastic measures to break that perception/reality. All-Star Weekend can no longer remain the Woodstock for parolees, wannabe rap artists and baby's mamas on tax-refund vacations.

This was not a byproduct of the game being held in Vegas. All-Star Weekend has been on this path for the past five or six years. Every year the event becomes more and more a destination for troublemakers.

If something isn't done, next year's All-Star Weekend will surpass the deceased Freaknik, a weekend-long party in Atlanta, in terms of lawlessness. Wide-spread looting and a rape killed the Freaknik in 1999.

The NBA's image cannot survive bedlam in the French Quarter. And I'm not sure it can survive the embarrassment of a New Orleans standoff between its fans and the National Guard, either.

If Stern wants to continue to strengthen the international appeal of his game, he has the perfect excuse to move the All-Star Game to Germany, China, England or anywhere Suge Knight's posse can't find it.

[Brew 66]

Not that I am defending the NBA... but!

We had so many "professional female entertainers" in town for the FBR Open (Phoenix Open) a couple of weeks back that you would have thought you were in Vegas.

Also, the DUI's from the event were more then traditional party holidays. Just ask Doug Parker CEO of US Airways?

Alot of this type of behavior surrounds just about every professional sports event.

Now why is it again that athletes shouldn't be our kids role models?

[jriera]

Let's just say that was a great weekend for NOT going anywhere near The Strip.

I flew in from NY on Thursday night and that was a very 'colorful' flight.

We have much bigger conventions (SEMA, CES even the Adult Entertainment expo) with a lot less troubles. Don't think that the 'natives' will miss that kind of event.

Good luck to New Orleans next year!!