Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley plans to meet with NBA commissioner Adam Silver next week to pitch downtown as the possible site for a professional basketball arena.
“Next week I have Zoom meeting with Adam Silver, who’s the head of the NBA and I want to welcome him, tell him about my basketball past, and I just know this is going to be so extraordinary for our city,” Berkley said during a Thursday news conference.
During the Zoom with Silver, Berkley plans to pitch a site in downtown that she thinks would be a perfect fit for an NBA arena, noting Clark County has become a hub of the pro sports action, with the Knights at T-Mobile Arena, the Raiders at Allegiant Stadium, the Aces and Mandalay Bay and the Athletics soon to call a $2 billion ballpark home at the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard.
“I know they ware considering a number of locations, I’m not sure they are considering a location in Las Vegas; they’re all in the county,” Berkley said. “I don’t have a problem with that. Whatever is happening in the county with T-Mobile (Arena), or Allegiant, a fabulous, fabulous stadium, and what’s going to happen with the A’s and their stadium on Trop. We have an alternative, and I would like to propose it to them (NBA) to see if they would even come down and see it for themselves.”
The site Berkley pitched is a 20-acre plot located near City Hall, by the World Market Center that is owned by asset manager Blackstone.
“It’s near a freeway, it won’t be as congested (as) on the Strip,” Berkley said. “It’s an alternative that they may want to examine, and I’m not sure that anybody has proposed it yet.”
Berkley also wants to use the meeting to get to know Silver, whom she has yet to meet. She plans to invite Silver to her office the next time he visits Southern Nevada. Berkley said she comes from a basketball family; her father used to play pick-up basketball with NBA legend Bob Cousy in upstate New York when she was a child.
Silver has had previous conversations with former mayors Oscar and Carolyn Goodman about the NBA over the years. Silver even name dropped the Goodmans in his news conference last week where he announced the NBA was exploring Las Vegas for an NBA team.
“My predecessor, Oscar (Goodman), thought that this was so important for the future of Las Vegas, tourism here,” Berkley said.
The NBA expects to have their expansion exploration done in Las Vegas and Seattle by the end of the year and determine if they’ll move forward with expansion. If the league does, that’s when the ownership group and arena site will be announced.
Two know groups are interested in owning an NBA Las Vegas expansion franchise. One is headed by NBA great Earvin “Magic” Johnson, and the other includes Golden Knights owner Bill Foley. Raiders and Aces owner Mark Davis will not comment on his interest in being part of an ownership group for an NBA team, but he hasn’t ruled it out, either.
Berkley said when she was younger, she never imagined pro sports in Southern Nevada — and now the city is primed to have all four major leagues and other minor league teams playing around the area.
“It can only do good for the city,” Berkley said.
With Las Vegas being know as the entertainment, gaming and wedding capital of the world, adding sports capital of the world to those titles only makes sense, Berkley said.
“I think that this is a marriage that’s going to be made in heaven,” she said.
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.