Las Vegas flirting with Pistons?...

**Al Publican** · July-17-10, 12:23 AM

I've seen mention in a couple of places that Las Vegas based money is interested in having a NBA team and, unlike the NFL, the NBA is open to having a team in that city. Any fresh about Vegas feelers on the Pistons?

**Patrick** · July-17-10, 12:29 AM

Anything is possible in this day and age. Money talks and as Michigan loses economic prestige, the Sunbelt gains. SE Michigan will not always be a sports franchise powerhouse if things keep going the way they are going.

DetroitDad · July-17-10, 01:01 AM

Originally Posted by Patrick

Anything is possible in this day and age. Money talks and as Michigan loses economic prestige, the Sunbelt gains. SE Michigan will not always be a sports franchise powerhouse if things keep going the way they are going.

Las Vegas generally has passed us in being the worst of many things, especially in abandoned vacant buildings.

**Crumbled_pavement** · July-17-10, 07:01 AM

I'd be very surprised if the Auburn Hills Pistons became the Las Vegas Pistons.

**ashauk1** · July-17-10, 08:06 AM

Las Vegas has always been considered for major sports teams because of its relatively large and growing population, but it's never granted one because of Las Vegas's reliance on gambling and the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB do not want to be associated with gambling.

**Searay215** · July-17-10, 08:36 AM

Here's a thought.....If Peter Karmanos wants to redeem himself in this town after supporting KK then he should buy the Pistions and keep them here, If there is any real thought of them moving.

**Patrick** · July-17-10, 08:44 AM

I just can't imagine having any sort of outdoor team there with such high heat levels. Footbal abd baseball in Vegas would need to be indoors.

**R8RBOB** · July-17-10, 10:58 AM

The idea of having any professional franchises playing in Las Vegas would be a horrible idea. There are too many horror stories of athletes getting in debt [[Darren McCarty, Dennis Rodman, Charles Barkley, Antoine Walker) as a result of being frequent visitors to the various casinos. One of the reasons why Iverson sucked in Detroit was due to him spending a lot of time in the Detroit casinos. His decision to stay at the Motor City Hotel didn't help.

**1KielsonDrive** · July-17-10, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Patrick

Anything is possible in this day and age. Money talks and as Michigan loses economic prestige, the Sunbelt gains. SE Michigan will not always be a sports franchise powerhouse if things keep going the way they are going.

You said it. And accurately.

**1KielsonDrive** · July-17-10, 01:01 PM

Originally Posted by Searay215

Here's a thought.....If Peter Karmanos wants to redeem himself in this town after supporting KK then he should buy the Pistions and keep them here, If there is any real thought of them moving.

Great idea. But what gives you the idea that any BILLIONaire feels any need to redeem him/herself?

**Ray1936** · July-17-10, 02:00 PM

Originally Posted by Patrick

I just can't imagine having any sort of outdoor team there with such high heat levels. Footbal abd baseball in Vegas would need to be indoors.

Las Vegas has a very fine AAA minor league baseball team playing at outdoor Cashman Field, just north of downtown. I attend a few games every year, and quite enjoy it, even in 105+. Usually it cools down to 99 once the sun sets. With 3% humidity, it's quite pleasant.

The team is the Las Vegas 51's, named for Area 51 on the DOE test site area.

**CLAUDE G** · July-18-10, 02:10 AM

I heard a rumor the other day that the Pistons are not moving, but its more likely to be the Golden State Warriers.. Lets hope thats true

**R8RBOB** · July-18-10, 02:50 AM

Originally Posted by CLAUDE G

I heard a rumor the other day that the Pistons are not moving, but its more likely to be the Golden State Warriers.. Lets hope thats true

No, the Warriors aren't leaving the Bay. You are talking about a population base of over 7.4 million people.The Warriors always had supportive fans but never a supporting owner. Now that they have owners willing to pay top dollar to buy the franchise maybe things will change. As for Pistons, smoke and mirrors.

**Red Devil** · July-18-10, 04:29 PM

What about Steve Ballmer? He's a native Detroiter, Pistons fan, and he definitely has the money/influence to put an ownership team together.

**BrushStart** · July-18-10, 04:38 PM

Ironically enough, I have spent several weeks in the Las Vegas valley this summer for work. My opinion on the issue is that LV does not have the permanent population to support a pro team of any kind. As of recently Clark County has < 2 million people, many of which are non-permanent residents. The Vegas economy is also hurting worse than ours. It's for another thread, but Las Vegas has some strikingly similar characteristics as yesteryear Detroit.

Edit: By non-permanent residents, I mean people who have only recently come to LV and follow the pro teams of their hometowns or people who have been here a few years, but are planning on leaving. A pro sports team needs a solid base of long-term, dedicated fans to be successful. I doubt tourists will attend pro bball games in Vegas with all the other attractions in town.

**CLAUDE G** · July-19-10, 03:42 AM

I think if someone puts together a deal to bring a professional sports team to Las Vegas, then they will find the money to build the arena.

With Basketball, your only talking about a little over 40 games anyways. There is other events that the place could be used for such as boxing that would make it worthwhile.

Besides that, the Casinos got the money to build it. If for some reason the team got hot and went to the play-offs or championships, you got that many more people booking hotel rooms and spending money at the Casinos

**gencinjay** · July-19-10, 03:24 PM

The NBA has to approve any move for existing teams. Detroit is too good of a market to be allowed to move.

**BShea** · July-19-10, 03:43 PM

Originally Posted by gencinjay

The NBA has to approve any move for existing teams. Detroit is too good of a market to be allowed to move.

Pro sports owners are a clubby group in their respective leagues, and they don't want to set any precedent that might hamper themselves personally in the future.

That's why Art Modell was allowed to take the Browns out of Cleveland, where he had full stadiums every Sunday, for a city that lost a team because its fanbase stopped going to Colts games in the 1980s.

If a billionaire investor buys the Pistons, I can see the owners allowing him/her to move if he/she had an arena finance deal in place.

**iheartthed** · July-19-10, 04:25 PM

Originally Posted by BShea

Pro sports owners are a clubby group in their respective leagues, and they don't want to set any precedent that might hamper themselves personally in the future.

That's why Art Modell was allowed to take the Browns out of Cleveland, where he had full stadiums every Sunday, for a city that lost a team because its fanbase stopped going to Colts games in the 1980s.

If a billionaire investor buys the Pistons, I can see the owners allowing him/her to move if he/she had an arena finance deal in place.

I know you're just trying to emphasize the point that anything is possible... But do you really think this is worthy of discussion? We're talking a pipe-dream that the NBA allows the Pistons to leave the 11th largest media market in the U.S. [[top 5 territory if you include Flint and Toledo) to go to the Vegas ranked at 42.

**R8RBOB** · July-19-10, 05:06 PM

Originally Posted by BShea

Pro sports owners are a clubby group in their respective leagues, and they don't want to set any precedent that might hamper themselves personally in the future.

That's why Art Modell was allowed to take the Browns out of Cleveland, where he had full stadiums every Sunday, for a city that lost a team because its fanbase stopped going to Colts games in the 1980s.

If a billionaire investor buys the Pistons, I can see the owners allowing him/her to move if he/she had an arena finance deal in place.

Art Modell is an example but a better example is Clay Bennett. Bennett brought the Seattle SuperSonics [[Seattle SuperSonics was always a cool team name) with the sole intention to move them to Oklahoma City. Since the cheap Starbucks owner didn't want to fund his own arena and the city would not foot the bill he sold the team to Bennett and the move to OKC was on. Again, Bennett wanted all along to move the team to Oklahoma City but he had to lie to the people of Seattle and force the city and state hand by asking for a 500 million dollar arena he knew no one was going to pay for. Since he was not going to get his tax-payer "arena" built, he could lobby for relocation on the belief that the team would lose money playing in a dated arena hence the need to move and the rich owners granted his wish.

The Detroit Pistons are not exempted. They could be bought by an owner let's say based out of Pittsburgh and that owner could say the team can't make money in a repressed market like Michigan. Pittsburgh has a new arena opening for the Penguins. That owner could cry losing money, get the league to vote on relocation and the Pistons would be on the way to Pittsburgh. Owner do not care about the fans otherwise they would not move their franchises to other cities. If something like that did happen, Detroit would not be without a team for long. Another struggling franchise would vacate to have the Detroit market and take the Piston name and history as long as the previous owner was generous enough to leave the history behind.

**BShea** · July-19-10, 10:07 PM

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I know you're just trying to emphasize the point that anything is possible... But do you really think this is worthy of discussion? We're talking a pipe-dream that the NBA allows the Pistons to leave the 11th largest media market in the U.S. [[top 5 territory if you include Flint and Toledo) to go to the Vegas ranked at 42.

I think it's very worthy of discussion. The news broke that a real estate power broker with Vegas interests is trying to pull together a deal, and the Pistons are for sale. It's natural and appropriate to have the discussion and explore why it might/might not happen.

Because anything is possible, and crazier things have happened in ego/vanity-driven pro sports, it's important to have these discussions.

And it's not a pipe dream ... anything could quickly become reality. This isn't up to the NBA, it's up to the NBA team owners ... and they're going to think very carefully about blocking a move. The Pistons to Vegas is not nearly as Earth-shattering as the Browns leaving Cleveland. The NBA is far less popular in the U.S. than the NFL. The Browns move ended up causing Congressional hearings and forced the league to assuage the market by forcing model to leave the name, colors, records, etc, behind.

**donpablo** · July-19-10, 11:49 PM

If the Pistons move I will lose my fuc*ing mind and hate the owner forever...

**Cincinnati_Kid** · July-21-10, 02:14 AM

Originally Posted by BShea

I think it's very worthy of discussion. The news broke that a real estate power broker with Vegas interests is trying to pull together a deal, and the Pistons are for sale. It's natural and appropriate to have the discussion and explore why it might/might not happen.

Because anything is possible, and crazier things have happened in ego/vanity-driven pro sports, it's important to have these discussions.

And it's not a pipe dream ... anything could quickly become reality. This isn't up to the NBA, it's up to the NBA team owners ... and they're going to think very carefully about blocking a move. The Pistons to Vegas is not nearly as Earth-shattering as the Browns leaving Cleveland. The NBA is far less popular in the U.S. than the NFL. The Browns move ended up causing Congressional hearings and forced the league to assuage the market by forcing model to leave the name, colors, records, etc, behind.

It's less popular, but not far less. The NBA is growing globally and Pro and College basketball will always be more popular than the NHL. NFL is king with MLB a distant second.