Did Las Vegas Flunk NBA Audition?
All-Star Game Meant to Showcase City, Not Sink It
The NBA may be considering a move to Las Vegas, but brawls and shooting may have prevented any possibility.
Gunplay. Strippers. Nightclub brawls. Rude patrons. Negative press. These were not the phrases NBA Commissioner David Stern had in mind when the league scheduled its first All-Star Game in a non-NBA market, Las Vegas. A widely circulated column by Kansas City columnist Jason Whitlock, highlighted exactly these aspects of the weekend Washington post sportswriter Michael Wilbon used to tease co-worker Tony Kornheiser was "Black Thanksgiving". Sin City pulled out all the stops to attract and host the NBA's annual celebration, never anticipating that what was on display would be the same characteristics of bling culture that horrified fans and media after the Pistons-Pacers melee. Just when The League had recovered from this season's Nuggets-Knicks fracas, people over whom it has no jurisdiction- weekend attendees and NFL cornerback Pacman Jones, help turn Vegas into the Old West.
The tremors from such activity may take years to play out, as the phenomena took years to marinate. Observers such as Wilbon have noted for years that NBA All-Star Weekend and its attendant parties and profiling have been host to America's Most Flaunted for the better part of a decade. For thousands, either to Stern's pleasure or his chagrin, this, not Daytona, Churchill Downs, or the Super Bowl, the NBA All-Star Weekend has become to place to see and be seen. If it were only that, what happened in Vegas would have stayed in Vegas. Instead, fights, beefs, bimbos and bullets marked festitivies that will prompt major discussions from Nevada to New York to New Orleans (the latter the 2008 All-Star host city).
Stern and his braintrust must decide what can or must be done to ensure security and remove the criminal stigma from the happenings. Vegas has to account for the resulting court cases and sentences , its national image, and its hopes for an NBA franchise. New Orleans, with a relatively new NBA team and a downtown recovery from Katrina partly fueled by enthusiasm over the NFL Saints and the Sugar Bowl, will plan for the 2008 Weekend with everything that went wrong in Vegas in mind. Unenviable tasks for sure. After all, New Orleans was painted by many as a den of thugs when looting occurred after the 2005 flooding, and news reports (some exaggerated) spread of mayhem in the stage area Superdome. Some may even ask, "What was David Stern thinking?", in awarding his showcase to America's twin capitals of Anything Goes.
Whatever one thinks of Whitlock's words, he is Black. No white journalist save Whitlock's Kansas City homeboy Rush Limbaugh could say the same things in the politically correct America of 2007. Whitlock is also young, is he is being judgemental (not that the gunplay was imaginary, but if he is going overboard), he is of the generation about which he comments. That lends weight to his contentions. And due to his exposure on ESPN programs such as "The Sports Reporters" and "Pardon the Interruption", he was widely-known before the column appeared. Many who did not known him before, do now.
Sports is merely a microcosm of our culture- the violence that has cost the life of Denver Broncos' cornerback Darrent Williams, indicted Chicago Bears' defensive tackle Tank Johnson, and surrounded the Cincinnati Bengals, Stephen Jackson, Ron Artest, and Maurice Clarett is the prevailing issue in athletics. While it is baseball that is taking all the heat for athletes being juiced, all the rage, whether steroid-enhanced or not, is expressed around football and basketball.
