LAS VEGAS – The league caught a major break last season when the Lakers made the inaugural NBA In-Season Tournament semifinals and then won the title.
Las Vegas is a Lakers town and the city is a four-hour drive from Los Angeles, so T-Mobile Arena was sold out for what was essentially a home game when the LeBron James-led Lakers cruised past the upstart Indiana Pacers 123-109.
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The first season of Commissioner Adam Silver's great experiment couldn't have gone much smoother for the league, which is back with the renamed NBA Cup. But the Lakers won't be back, and also missing is what would have been another major draw. Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors came up just short of making the semifinals a controversial one-point loss to the Houston Rockets on Wednesday night.
That doesn't mean there won't be star power in Saturday's semifinals. Former two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo and this season's second-best bet in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will be the featured names.
Whether they drive sellout business when the closest teams are at least a two-hour flight is the question.
“You always want star power because I think it adds to the intrigue and mystery of any event,” said Brendan Bussmann, managing partner of Las Vegas-based B Global Advisors consulting firm. “That said, Vegas is Vegas and it has its own star power within itself. Just having and hosting that tournament continues to grow in a positive way not just for the destination, but for the NBA.”
Playing a short walk away from the neon lights of Las Vegas Boulevard is why the NBA decided to play a neutral-site event here, knowing it had as potential customers not only the metropolitan area of about 2.3 million people but also a sliver of the roughly 40 million annual tourists.
However, Ticketmaster showed as of Thursday night that plenty of tickets remained for Saturday's Eastern Conference semifinals between Milwaukee and Atlanta and Western Conference foes Houston and Oklahoma City as well as Tuesday's championship game.
Secondary-market ticketing site Vivid Seats listed tickets as low as $17 for the Eastern semifinal, $30 for the West and $61 for the title game.
NBA officials said an extra day was added between the quarterfinals and semis to at least partly allow fans interested in traveling more time to plan. An extra day also was added between the semifinals and final to make it more of an overall experience than just the games.
Plus, this year's semifinals are on a weekend as compared to the afternoon weekday game last season between the Bucks and Pacers that drew a small crowd. The Lakers-Pelicans game, which was played that night, attracted a much larger gathering.
“We are pacing consistent with last year and we are getting a lot of momentum overnight,” Kelly Flatow, NBA executive vice president of global events, said Thursday morning. “We saw a lot more people visiting the access website. We're driving people to NBAevents.com, and we're really optimistic about what we see for Saturday and then certainly leading into the championship on Tuesday.”
She said the league reached out to Falcons fans group of about 2,500 who will be in Las Vegas for Atlanta's game Monday night against the Raiders and offered ticket packages to the games and ancillary events.
The NBA added more elements this year that include interactive activities, a high school basketball event featuring some of the nation's top prospects and a celebrity golf tournament.
But NBA officials also said the play on the court in the knockout games leading up to the semifinals underscored the increased intensity not only among the players but the fans as well, taking on more of a March Madness feel in December.
“Obviously, the notion of this tournament is it's different from an 82-game regular season or rounds of playoffs of seven games per round,” said Evan Wasch, NBA senior vice president of basketball strategy and analytics. “When you play a seven-game playoff series, the best teams are highly likely to rise to the top. But with a four-game group stage and a single-elimination knockout round, really anything can happen.”
That uncertain nature is why the defending champion Celtics or Western Conference champs Mavericks won't be in Las Vegas this weekend.
NBA officials hope that won't matter.
And maybe it won't. Maybe Las Vegas itself is enough of a sell, and fans from 12 countries and 30 states already have signed up for NBA Experience packages that include game tickets.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr certainly wanted to be in Las Vegas and was irate over a late loose-ball foul that led to the winning free throws in a 91-90 loss to the Rockets.
“I'm pissed off,” Kerr said after the game. “I wanted to go to Las Vegas. We wanted to win the Cup.”
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