Updated throughout the day with quick takes from staff.
As many of you might know, the NBA Summer League is currently going on in Las Vegas. This means it's a very convenient time to bring up the semi-regular discussion that always happens around now: the idea of an NBA team actually moving there.
It comes up a lot because David Stern has always been open to the idea, though that means something very different than saying he'd actually want it to happen. Plus, while I was in Vegas just now to cover Summer League, I asked practically every cab driver why no sports league considers moving a team out there, and they all responded with something to the effect of "Dude, did you see what happened at the 2007 NBA All-Star Game? No way." Vox Pop at its finest, folks.
So it's not a surprise that there are reports of an NBA team considering a move to Vegas right now. Except this time, those reports might actually be serious.
The Las Vegas Sun is reporting that an investment group called International Development Management LLC is on the cusp of purchasing an NBA team and moving it to Las Vegas. There's only one holdup, and it's a big one: they want to build an arena on the strip.
For the deal to go through, said Chris Milam, CEO of International Development Management LLC, the group must strike a deal with the county to fund construction of the arena - dubbed the Silver State Arena - slated for the old Wet 'n Wild water park site.
"We have an NBA team under contract," Milam said, declining to name the franchise. But the deal will take effect only if "other pieces of the puzzle fall into place: One of those pieces will be that a building (arena) is approved," he said.
(Hold up: an arena on the Strip called the "Silver State Arena?" Awesome! Well, except for the traffic).
Milam is trying to sell Las Vegas officials on financing the arenas through something known as tax-increment financing, which is described in detail in the article. Milam is also trying to convince city officials that having an NBA team would create more jobs and generally be a revenue stream for the city, which is something the brand-new Aria Resort, which has a brutal 63-percent occupancy rate in its first quarter, would probably disagree with. It all sounds like a far-fetched plan.
But the fact that Milam has an NBA team "under contract" is a huge game-changer. And since we're sports fans, not Las Vegas city politics fans (for the most part), we want to speculate on which team that actually is. Some possibilities:
Detroit Pistons: The Pistons are mentioned specifically in the article because Karen Davidson, the widow of the long-time owner Bill Davidson, has said the team is for sale. Detroit's economy, of course, is getting killed, and that, combined with the team's increased struggles, has caused the Palace of Auburn Hills to be sparsely populated, even though it's outside of the city. Odds: 3-1
New Orleans Hornets: The Hornets' money problems are no secret, and they just fired the very competent Jeff Bower as their GM. Oh, and they might trade away their best asset in Chris Paul. Also, they're probably for sale, though you never know with George Shinn. Odds: 3-1
Sacramento Kings: The Kings appear to have stabilized themselves a bit more financially thanks to the addition of Tyreke Evans, but considering the Maloof brothers' connection to Las Vegas and the Palms, as well as their own struggles trying to build a new arena in Sacramento, they are always a candidate. Odds: 6-1.
Memphis Grizzlies: The Grizzlies' lease in Memphis runs through the 2020/21 season, but consider that this is the same team that a) is squabbling with first-round pick Xavier Henry over paying him 120-percent of the mandatory rookie scale contract, and b) freaked out and signed Rudy Gay to a max contract right away because they were worried about having to match a contract for the same amount of money long-term, except frontloaded where Gay would make more in Year 1. They're a bit frugal with money, to put it nicely. Anyway, it's going to take time for Las Vegas to build this arena, so by then, we'll be closer to the end of their lease in Memphis. Odds: 12-1.
Indiana Pacers: Yes, they're playing in the basketball mecca of Indiana. But have you seen those crowds? Also, long-time owner Herb Simon passed away this year, so there's at least a little bit of an ownership gap. Odds: 15-1.
Minnesota Timberwolves: They're off the radar, but their arena is pretty old and their team is probably going to be terrible for a long time. Remember: this Las Vegas team is probably going to be a long-term idea, and in three years, if Ricky Rubio doesn't come over, what kind of assets do the Timberwolves have? Odds: 30-1.
Miami Heat: Because LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh will get hurt, and the fans will stop supporting them. Odds: 1,000,000-1.
The crazy part about this whole scenario is that it means Las Vegas could get a new team before Seattle. If Seattle fans hadn't given up on the NBA already, this would certainly drive them away.
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Fuck You
Timberwolves terrible for a long time? Get over it! You’re a fucking joke of a writer, do you have any original thoughts or opinions or do you just go off what other media tools say?
by NorthernLights666 on Jul 14, 2010 3:57 PM EDT reply actions
You must be joking...
How are you criticizing Prada for being critical of the Timberwolves? They perennially get a top five pick and then waste them. They traded away their major asset (Jefferson) for more picks. In 09, they go with Rubio at 5 (knowing he won’t leave), Flynn at 6, end up with Wayne Ellignton. So after getting three guards in the first round last year, you’d think they’d try to spread around those picks since they’re running the triangle and need a big man with good rebounding a ball control, right? NO! They get Wesley Johnson at 4 rather than DeMarcus Cousins or Greg Monroe (who would be great in the triangle given his ability to make big plays for his teammates). They traded Trevor Booker and N’Daiye for Lazar Hayward (who played at the 4 at Marquette, is even small at the 3, and has been projected to potentially play at SG) and Nemanja Bjelica (listed at SF, though big enough to play PF if you move Love). David Kahn also traded Ryan Gomes and the 16th pick (Luke Babbit) for Martell Webster. That’s the Martell Webster that lost an entire year of play due to injury and was sent to the D-League, for a player that didn’t miss a game and averaged 4 points more per game. I have thought that the Twolves have had a ton of potential, but they don’t seem to have a clue as to how to take advantage of it. Until you get a GM that can actually draft well after selling off all the potential, the joke is on you.
With all due respect, I don’t think Mr. Prada was that far off and your response was out of line. He’s a perfectly fine writer and thinking the twolves have a long road to improvement is in no way evidence that a writer is a “media tool”. Look at their trades, FA acquisitions, drafts, and the numbers. I think it is hard to disagree with Mike’s conclusions.
by GeorgiaGator on Jul 14, 2010 5:42 PM EDT up reply actions
Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahn!
CougCenter
by Brian Floyd on Jul 14, 2010 6:37 PM EDT up reply actions
You are a joke along with this dumbass Prada.
Have either of you two fuckfaces ever been to Target Center. It was just renovated you dumbshits. You fucking jokes can go flip a coin to decide which one is going to be pitcher and who is catching tonight. Assholes.
by sbnationsux on Jul 14, 2010 7:48 PM EDT up reply actions
He's had a pretty bad
draft record, but I don’t think most of your comments about anything else are accurate.
Curry > Flynn
Cousins > Wes (most likely)
But Ellington was a great pick. Flynn was the wrong pick, but the concept was spot on. He realized that Rubio couldn’t realistically come over after the third pick and he picked up a PG to hold his spot, as we had just traded away our entire backcourt (thank god). Flynn isn’t awful, he just reached on him and was wrong. He had legitimate concerns about Curry that ended up being wrong. Happens all the time in the draft. Their expected plan, supposedly, was Evans + Curry until Rubio fell and their plans were drastically altered. Apparently there was a deal in place Evans for Flynn + James Johnson, but the Bulls took him and Kahn didn’t think there was enough of a discrepancy to make it worth it (wrong).
Would you have passed over Rubio for 2 consecutive picks?
Our frontcourt going into the draft looked likely to be: Love/Jefferson/Darko/Pekovic. Adding a C (not PF, and Monroe was wayyy to redundant for his projected talent level) would have been legit knowing Jefferson was on the way out, but probably not worth passing on a position of need. This is of course assuming that Cousins was not the pick (I will never understand why this wasn’t an obvious pick for us…). Johnson was easily the best fit for our roster and the near-consensus BPA behind Cousins (again, why did we pass on Cousins…). Our wings were still the obvious positions to address, no matter which way you slice it.
Why should drafting guards last year (by the way, we drafted 2 PGs, not 4 like national media writers like to suggest) stop us from drafting a SF?
The Triangle is overstated. Kahn has been consistent in saying the ultimate goal is not to be a Triangle team, but to be an uptempo team. The Triangle was used by Rambis as a means to teach the team to be independent of the bench on every possession. The outcome hopefully being that it would speed up our tempo because our guards won’t be waiting for a play to be called on every play.
The Darko signing got awful publicity because he is a draft bust. But his production is still quite in line with $5M/yr for other backup bigs (a discount compared to many). If the Triangle is a reason to hate on some of his moves, it should be a reason to applaud this one.
They traded 23 (not Booker) for the picks that were used on Hayward and Bjelica, not N’Daiye. Kahn has also specified how he wants guys who are versatile, so Hayward sounds good there and he impressed a lot of fans in summer league (not his numbers, his style and tenacity. Though his numbers were nice from the 30th pick too).
Bjelica is another versatile guy (compred by many to Kukoc lite) who should be an interesting piece to follow.
Webster, as much as I wasn’t thrilled about the acquisition, is not bad. We were going to buy out the rest of Gomes’ nonguaranteed contract (Which would have left some cash cutting into our cap space for the next couple years) anyways, so it was basically 16 for Webster with them buying out Gomes instead of us. It also made the salary work and allowed us to do it before the contracts all came off the books. He was stuck behind a pretty nice Portland wing rotation, but he isn’t a bad player by any means. We’re expecting some reasonable improvement, but not holding our breath for him to be great (though apart from PPG, he should fit a better position and be a much better defender who scores more efficiently)
I’m as upset about their misuse of assets (I’ve been harping on asset maximization for quite a while now at Canis Hoopus) as anyone, but they still have plenty of potential (Beasley for nearly nothing) and to write that off seems…. short sighted at best. They’re in a better position than many teams in the league, despite their mismanagement of assets, but Kahn has done a pretty good job with what he started with just over a year ago (gutting the roster completely doesn’t usually yield many wins). Could many people have done better? Sure. The draft would have been the primary way, as I think he has done quite well with his trades (Foye and Miller for Rubio? Ten times out of ten, yes please) and hasn’t locked us in to any awful contracts (Beasley is currently our highest paid player…. awesome).
All that said, don’t take the two responses on here as typical Wolves fans. To be fair, everyone in MN is a little tired of reading blatantly false information about the Wolves that paints them in a bad light, but it was… embarassing on both accounts.
Despite sbnationsux’s appauling attitude (Obviously a fake name that was too afraid to say that without anonymity), he was right about the facilities being renovated (apparently Kahn has made a lot of modern updates that McHale had idiotically ignored).
Rudy Gay: Feeding his family since 7/1/10
by Mplax on Jul 14, 2010 9:13 PM EDT up reply actions
Fair points.
I absolutely understand and agree with most of the things you said, though a bit of our differences come from misunderstanding because I wasn’t clear. When it came to the Booker trade, etc. I thought the specifics were understood. I was just emphasizing what you could have had. I think y’all have focused too much at individual positions, and failed to actualize on the team building aspects the draft offers. Most drafts aren’t deep enough to just focus on that one piece rather than looking around for some options. I think you make a strong point about the Gomes trade making space, but I look at your free agency moves and wonder what the end game is. Why get rid of assets if you use the space to give role players? The reason I’ve been excited for the Twolves is that they do manage to acquire good talent, but they tend to squander it (Jefferson) and often fail to maximize what they do get out of good deals. I think that if Kahn had picked Rubio with the plan of moving him, it would have made sense, but he hasn’t. I think there were plenty of teams in the market for Rubio who would have paid handsomely for the opportunity, and he let that chance pass him by. Maybe I am overvaluing the market for him, and if so, please let me know, but that feels indicative of Kahn’s style. He should have done his due diligence and recognized that Rubio had no intention of coming to MN. Instead, it has the potential to be a virtually wasted pick.
I wasn’t really concerned about the facilities, and meant no slight on the organization or it’s fans, just disappointed at what I see is a lot of young talent being under-utilized. I hope the Timberwolves have a great season, because the League only gets better when there is parity.
by GeorgiaGator on Jul 15, 2010 1:14 AM EDT up reply actions
Sounds like it isn’t Kahn who should have done the due diligence ;)
Rubio has more or less stated that he is planning on playing for us (I’d expect next year or more likely the year after if it looks like there will be a lockout). There was an article a couple months or so ago that was titled differently on a few major sites, all of which were something to the effect of, “Rubio will play in NBA, probably not for Wolves.” But then you’d go in and read the article and there was a comment from Rubio, again I’m not 100% sure the exact quote, but something to the effect of, “The Timberwolves continue to be my first choice to play for. They have shown me that they believe in me and really want me there. I would still like to see them improve and I understand that I could be moved.” Once again, something close to that. Nothing close to what the headlines suggested. We got a pretty good (but annoyed) laugh over that at Canis Hoopus.
There’s also a pretty lengthy, but brilliant article from Canis Hoopus manager Stop n Pop. If you have any interest in reading it, I could probably get a link for you. But it’s about Rubio and it does a great job of giving very specific details about what happened and why it happened the way it did. If you want to search it, I believe it was titled, “Everything you need to know about the Rubio situation” or something to that effect. Seriously great article, and I have nothing against Mike Prada (as I think he does a great job), but Stop n Pop really is the best writer I have seen on SBNation (And it shows. Just look at the traffic on that blog compared to the market size. Puts most big market blogs to shame… and as it recently came up, even put the better performing, larger following, sports in our own state to shame (Twinkie Town, specifically)).
Anyways, I was actually pretty happy with the FA moves. Once again, Darko is on a very reasonable contract (especially when compared to other contracts signed this offseason: JJ, Gay, Amir Johnson, Gooden, Matthews), but it was written that Kahn was going to get bashed for it about 5 years ago. Pekovic is a great signing for his price. Ridnour is a decent signing if they can find a decent package for Sessions (if they dump him for capspace, I’ll be pretty annoyed as they are largely a wash, with Ridnour fitting our team better. And I do think Sessions is the better player, just a worse fit).
Rudy Gay: Feeding his family since 7/1/10
by Mplax on Jul 15, 2010 3:48 PM EDT up reply actions
I remember the headline and just figured it was another one of those three paragraph articles that doesn’t actually say anything. Guess I should have done a little more looking. I’m still a little skeptical, but I hope that is me being overly wary.
When it comes to free agency, I get disappointed to see all the cap space y’all have (one of the five lowest), but still unable to make moves on any big name players. Maybe I am being too critical, but I don’t see the Twolves being able to get out of the doldrums picking up role players like Darko, Ridnour, and Pekovic. Even with a great player like Al Jefferson, y’all struggled. It’ll be interesting to see how Kahn’s long term plan will work.
by GeorgiaGator on Jul 16, 2010 12:54 AM EDT up reply actions
Yep
the FA thing is generally just the [false] common perception of MN that makes nobody want to come here. The facilities were, until recently, far below average. The weather is cold (but not to the extent that it is rumored). Nobody actually speaks like they do in Fargo (which is not even in MN). And second only to the climate (and apparently another false perception that there is no… racial mix…), is the fact that MN has been awful for years now. Many people (and I can only assume players as well) also think that we are some tiny midwestern market, but in reality we are one of the larger markets in the NBA. But because of all that, we had no shot at anyone except maybe David Lee (we already have Love). Not really fair to blame Kahn for that one.
Jefferson is an overrated volume scorer (by no means was he “great” for us). But he might thrive in Utah’s system if they can add some shooters and focus on him in some more PnR. Also, if Sloan can get him to give a crap on defense, he might be a great pickup for them. Most in MN were glad to see him go (and also glad that he got to go to a good team because he really was a great guy (by all accounts) and very professional during his time here (minus a DUI)).
Rudy Gay: Feeding his family since 7/1/10
by Mplax on Jul 17, 2010 2:34 PM EDT up reply actions
if he had a so called "original" thought that the timberwolves were great
then he would be stupid…. but they do suck and wasting draft picks happens to have that effect
by vitzeng on Jul 14, 2010 11:32 PM EDT up reply actions
What about Golden State
haven’t the warriors been up for sale for a while now?
I plan to live forever or die trying - Catch22
by NinjaBaller on Jul 14, 2010 4:00 PM EDT reply actions
No way they leave the Bay Area market
SB Nation DC | Bullets Forever | Twitter.
by Mike Prada on Jul 14, 2010 4:17 PM EDT up reply actions
Probable teams
My top three would be Detroit, New Orleans or Memphis. What about Toronto or would Stern not want to lose his entire Canadian footprint?
by JoshuaR on Jul 14, 2010 4:03 PM EDT reply actions
Never mind
Their attendance is higher than I thought (Toronto)
by JoshuaR on Jul 14, 2010 4:41 PM EDT up reply actions
Warriors
I was terrified that the Warriors would be one of those potential teams moving to LV. But the point about the market strength is a good one, and especially if Larry Ellison buys the team the furthest they’re going from Coakland is to The City.
Anyway, I’m a warriors diehard fan and even I know the wolves are a joke. David Kahn is more of a punch line that fuckin Nellie and that, irritable fella, is a fucking feat.
Well done Mike. Don’t listen to the haters unless they’re actually correct. Peace.
by RACE!! on Jul 14, 2010 8:41 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
As a Michigan
native. I just don’t see the Pistons moving. One of only a few teams in the NBA to win a Championship in the last 30 years with 3 championships. There are local people who would buy the team first IMO. Seriously though, if the Pistons leave Detroit, I would look for the Cavaliers to move to Detroit, as Gilbert wanted to own the Pistons initially anyway.
by severs28 on Jul 15, 2010 11:55 AM EDT reply actions
I agree
Can’t see the Pistons leaving Motown. The Pistons are so much a part of Detroit, it would be like losing GM.
H2H Fantasy Sports
by dula14 on Jul 16, 2010 2:02 PM EDT up reply actions
And we all know that could never happen....
Oh wait, never mind!
The past of your franchise really has little bearing on the present state of the organization. Just ask the Supersonic fans. My money is on either the Pistons or the Hornets moving to Vegas.
by lazy cake on Jul 20, 2010 7:55 AM EDT up reply actions
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