The NBA Summer League series recently concluded at UNLV's Thomas & Mack Center, but Las Vegas remains in the men's pro basketball conversation.
Two expansion teams are likely coming to the NBA, and one of them is widely expected to call the Strip home. That prospect has spurred multiple ownership groups to bid on said team, according to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, as well as pitch a number of proposals involving venues both new and old.
If the NBA chooses Las Vegas, it will have a team from all four of the major men's professional sports leagues — a feat the city would likely accomplish within only a decade's time.
Alan Snel, publisher and owner of LVSportsBiz.com, believes the race to own the team will come down to two parties. One of them is Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley, who helped build much of the city's professional sports infrastructure. The other is a group headed by someone less familiar to Las Vegas: Jerry Colangelo.
"[He's] a huge name in professional basketball," Snel told KNPR's State of Nevada. "He used to own the Phoenix Suns. He knows the desert lifestyle. He knows the desert economy. What's important is [that] he ran USA Basketball, which oversaw the men's national basketball team. So you're talking about two big hitters between Foley and Colangelo."
Should either one of them — or even one of the other groups vying for ownership that Silver didn't reveal during Summer League — win the bid for a prospective Las Vegas team, they can expect to pay somewhere in the $8-$11 billion range, said Snel.
If Foley gets the team, he's already said he'll seek out $300-$400 million of renovations to T-Mobile Arena — where the Knights play, and in which Foley has a 15% ownership stake — that could include additional seats and suites. He'll also need to build facilities to accommodate the new team off-court. Foley has also said T-Mobile may not even be the permanent home of the team, which suggests a possible move to a newer arena.
Of all the alternative venue possibilities, Snel said the most "legitimate" choice is being called the Las Vegas Diamond Arena, which would be built across from Mandalay Bay on Las Vegas Boulevard, just a couple blocks south from the future stadium for the Athletics baseball team. Preliminary plans call for that arena to be connected to Harry Reid Airport via tunnel. Snel did add a caveat to the group's prospects.
"It's being pitched by a developer that has not mentioned how he would fund it, or his ownership," Snel said. "A representative for that group said that they're waiting to get some feedback [from] the NBA in terms of a timeline."
Silver says the NBA is aiming to pick the expansion teams by the end of this year, with the hopes of them seeing game time for the 2028-2029 season.
Guest: Alan Snel publisher, LVSportsBiz.com
