NBA unveils plan for 2007 All-Star Game in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- The NBA is going "all-in" with its All-Stars.

The 2007 NBA All-Star game is headed to Las Vegas, the first time a city without a franchise has been chosen to host the event.

The festivities will take place just off the Strip, at the Thomas & Mack Center on the UNLV campus.

Commissioner David Stern called it "a merger between the basketball capital of the world and the entertainment capital of the world" during a news conference Friday while downplaying any concern about linking the image-conscious NBA with Sin City and gambling.

"If I were concerned, I wouldn't be doing it," he said.

Casinos will not take bets on any All-Star events under a ban proposed by the NBA and approved in June by state gambling regulators.

Such bans are not unprecedented in Las Vegas. The Palms hotel-casino does not accept bets on professional basketball games because it is owned by the Maloof family, which also owns the Sacramento Kings.

Memphis and New Orleans also submitted bids to host the 2007 game, but Stern said the league wanted to expand its reach.

"The step here," Stern said, "is to open this up to non-NBA cities."

Next year's game will be in Houston, but Stern has said Paris was being considered for 2008 or 2009.

The deal with Las Vegas was delayed for several weeks while local tourism and Thomas & Mack Center officials persuaded luxury box holders to turn over control of their suites to the NBA for the Feb. 16-18 weekend.

Friday's announcement featured Las Vegas showgirls and officials posing for photographs holding jerseys reading "Las Vegas 07." Stern was flanked by league and local officials, including George, Joe and Gavin Maloof and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who has been trying to lure a professional sports franchise to the city.

The commissioner deflected questions about whether the move means the league wants to put a team in Las Vegas.

"I don't know if the conditions of the moment are appropriate to answer that question," he said.

Goodman couldn't contain his glee about hosting the NBA's midseason showcase, and predicted after the news conference that the next franchise will be in Las Vegas.

"(Stern is) a reasonable man, and reasonable men do reasonable things," Goodman said.

George Maloof thinks the city deserves a basketball team, but acknowledged that "gambling is the biggest hurdle."

The NBA is no stranger to the Thomas & Mack Center. The league has staged 13 regular-season games there since the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz first played in November 1983, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar broke the NBA scoring record there in April 1985.