By the late 1990s, Las Vegas was an offseason magnet for basketball. AAU basketball held summer tournaments in the city. The UNLV men’s basketball team made three Final Four appearances from 1987 to 1991 and won a national championship in 1990. Professional players went there in the offseason to work out and established residencies to take advantage of lower taxes. Coaches congregated to meet with one another as well as scout and evaluate amateur and professional talent. NBA teams went there for offseason minicamps.
“Vegas had become a go-to place,” NBA agent Warren LeGarie said last month. “It gives you an opportunity to get better at your sport and, at the same time, once you’re off the court you can have a nice evening. … For the coaches who were working out guys, it was like, ‘Man, why don’t we have a summer league here?'”
LeGarie pitched former NBA executive vice president of basketball operations Rod Thorn on doing just that in the late 1990s, but the idea was shot down by the league. The league viewed the Las Vegas Strip as nothing but trouble with its gambling-based economy and tempting nightlife.
“It just seemed to suggest more problems than solutions,” LeGarie said. “Initially, it was a hard no.”
LeGarie didn’t give up, however. He and his business partner Albert Hall had been attending various NBA summer leagues for years and, while they believed they were good places to do business, they thought they could be improved. That led to the idea to create their own, and they found themselves continuing to come back to Vegas as the destination for it.
“We thought we could make it more of an event,” Hall said last month. “Vegas was an ideal location because you could get direct flights from everywhere. And, at the time, it was really starting to come around from a recreational, lifestyle, family perspective. There was something for that group; it wasn’t just gambling and nightlife. It was entertainment. It was shows, golf, recreational activities and food and dining.”
The duo added more detail to their plan and LeGarie pitched the idea again to then-deputy commissioner Adam Silver in 2003. This time, he received a much warmer response.
“He seemed to have a better feel for what the reality of Las Vegas was,” LeGarie said. “It was no longer just about The Strip. There were the outlying communities, it had the fastest-growing school districts, there was home construction. He was aware that the whole atmosphere had changed from before.”
LeGarie met with then-commissioner David Stern at All-Star weekend in 2004 and, a month later, the Las Vegas Summer League was approved. LeGarie and Hall fronted the cost for the initial event that year, which included six NBA teams. Now, 17 years later, all 30 teams participate in Las Vegas in the MGM Resorts NBA Summer League. The 10-day league runs this year from Sunday to Aug. 17 with games at the Thomas & Mack Center and Cox Pavilion on the UNLV campus.
The popularity of the league has grown exponentially. At the same time, so has the sports community in Vegas. It’s become home to the NHL’s Golden Knights, WNBA’s Aces and NFL’s Raiders in the last three years alone. In many ways, Summer League paved the way for Vegas to become a destination for sports. And it doesn’t appear to be finished growing yet.
Locals were not believers initially in the Las Vegas Summer League. That was abundantly clear to LeGarie and Hall from the onset.
“We held a press conference and every question was like, ‘You gotta be kidding. What makes you think you can do it? A lot of other people have tried,’” LeGarie said. “There was no encouragement. Zero. When we went and knocked on doors, it was like, ‘Call us another time. Not interested.’”
The reception was discouraging, but they remained optimistic due to how many NBA coaches were behind the league. In the past, summer leagues had been scattered around the country in cities such as Princeton, N.J., San Antonio, Atlanta, Orlando, Salt Lake City and typically lasted only three to five days. (Salt Lake City and now Sacramento still host those smaller two- to three-day events.) They required a lot of travel and the payoff wasn’t always worth it considering the limited time to observe talent. Having a centralized summer league that spanned for an extended period of time just made more sense.
That part was easy to get across, but fans didn’t care about that. They wanted entertainment, which meant the on-court product had to be legit. The 10-day league had notable rookies such as Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo, Al Jefferson and Marcus Banks in its first year, but it wasn’t until it expanded to 12 teams in Year 2 that locals really took notice.
“The local community really got behind it,” Hall said. “We kept ticket prices low. We’ve maintained our one ticket is good for all games philosophy. We could’ve easily priced it as sessions and all these other things, but we really wanted the locals and the fans and the basketball people of Las Vegas to feel like this was their slice of the NBA.
“We’ve done an excellent job of maintaining our footprint in our community. We now have a foundation in Vegas. So, we’ve really given back where we can each and every year and made this not just a, ‘Hey, we’re in town for a week and promoting something,’ situation, but we’ve made Las Vegas our NBA home.”
In its first year, Las Vegas Summer League only drew about 1,700 fans total. Its most recent showcase in 2019 averaged 12,199 fans per day. That increase includes people from all over, but many of the attendees remain Vegas locals.
“The Summer League is homegrown,” LeGarie said. “The people in Vegas, I think when you bring it up there, there’s a source of pride that this is one of their own. It isn’t an event that they bought or had to pay a rights fee to come in; this is something that they initially helped create and sustain. And look, a good portion of the fans are Vegas fans; they’re from Vegas. That part has been terrific for us.”
Additionally, the business brought in from the NBA, international teams, international scouts, agents and spectators in attendance have had a positive impact on the city’s economy. According to a report in collaboration with Las Vegas Events and Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Summer League is estimated to bring in $50 million to Vegas.
“We’re really proud of that as two guys who started this on a credit card, six handshakes and a box of fliers,” Hall said. “You have fans from all 30 NBA teams coming to Vegas because it’s a great destination and they can get away. They’re really growing their fan base using Summer League. That economic impact is real. I think we’re going to continue to see that and that will keep growing as we keep adding to Summer League.”
Summer League wasn’t spared from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The postponement of the NBA season last March and restart through the NBA bubble, which spanned from July through October, meant the 2020 NBA Draft didn’t occur until November. So, for the first time since it began in 2004, Summer League didn’t happen.
“Having to take 2020 off, it was a blow,” Hall said. “It was a big challenge. Because the one thing that Warren and I have always done is we reinvest back into the business. We’re not just trying to carve out profit every year; we’re re-investing in our business from Day 1 and that’s always been the key to our success. Having done that in ’19 thinking that ’20 was going to be another record year and it not happening, it was a tough pill to swallow.
“We’re excited about ’21 now and not going to try to make up lost ground overnight, but building that momentum up is going to be a challenge. People are still coming out of COVID. We’re doing everything we can to have a safe event and to build that model for what a safe event looks like. And we’re in this for the long haul, so once we get through ’21 we’ll take a step back like we always, figure out how we can build things up and make things better and then really attack ’21 with a long runway. … If we get out of ’21, I think ’22 will be special.”
The 2021 NBA Draft took place July 29, just 10 days before Summer League is set to start on Sunday. Preparations had begun before then, but LeGarie and Hall still had less time to work with than normal. The presence of the ongoing pandemic has precipitated an intense focus on details.
“As much as we’d like to believe that we’re past the pandemic, we’re not,” LeGarie said. “We’re really just focusing on making sure that we keep everybody safe. And we’re trying to put together the right protocols in between games to make sure that we’re doing everything we can so that this not only allows the teams to challenge their players and get better but for the fans to certainly have an enjoyable time at our event without potentially getting sick or being in a situation where they feel unsafe. Right now, that’s our new thing is to just make this thing work and be able to pull it out.”
Assuming Summer League gets back on track, it’ll rejoin the trio of the Golden Knights, Aces and Raiders in continuing to establish the presence of professional sports in Vegas. On top of the three professional franchises it already has, it’s also a “viable” option to land the MLB’s A’s. In combination with the increased prevalence of legalized gambling nationally and the willingness of sports leagues to embrace it as a part of their business, Vegas has become a legitimate sports hub.
“In all fairness, there’s a lot of pride and authorship in helping pull this off,” LeGarie. “Clearly, this can’t be done without the invaluable assistance and partnership with the NBA, but each and every year we know that they’re going to be busy with so many other events and our focus is solely on this event.”
The Summer League co-founders spent about three months planning the event when it began. Now, it requires about 11 months of planning.
“You get an emotional investment in something like that,” LeGarie said. “For us, we’ve watched our baby grow up to be a contributing member of society. … It really is a great source of pride that we’ve watched something grow from you knew personally all the people in the gym when you first started off to now you’re sitting there watching a sold-out event not only on the first day but the second and into the third day.”
Summer League helped prove professional sports can work in Vegas and, more specifically, it’s shown that there’s a city affinity for professional basketball. The Aces have checked that box on the women’s side, but there’s still a full-time void on the men’s side.
There hasn’t been confirmation of plans for NBA expansion or relocation, but it’s easy to envision Vegas as a city that would be eager to host a franchise. The planned entertainment complex All Net Resort and Arena will have a capacity of 22,800 and could potentially provide a home floor for a team. There’s no way of knowing now whether that’ll ever come to fruition, but the mere possibility of it is something that the Summer League co-founders are pleased to see.
“It fires us up,” Hall said. “We just produced this event that felt like an additional team, in a way. We softened the beach a little bit. I think we showed people that Vegas is much more than just a weekend gambling town. It’s still a small town in its own ways, but it’s grown up in so many others from a technology and hospitality standpoint. … I think Summer League was able to do that and say, ‘You know what? This is one way where they can sustain it.’
“That’s been enlightening to a lot of people. They’re like, ‘Wow, they’re able to do that with this smaller operation.’ Whereas now you bring in ownership groups and teams and they’re able to build it. … We take a lot of pride in it. If we were a big part of that early on and could help it, that’s great.”
By the late 1990s, Las Vegas was an offseason magnet for basketball. AAU basketball held summer tournaments in the city. The UNLV men’s basketball team made three Final Four appearances from 1987 to 1991 and won a national championship in 1990. Professional players went there in the offseason to work out and established residencies to take advantage of lower taxes. Coaches congregated to meet with one another as well as scout and evaluate amateur and professional talent. NBA teams went there for offseason minicamps.
“Vegas had become a go-to place,” NBA agent Warren LeGarie said last month. “It gives you an opportunity to get better at your sport and, at the same time, once you’re off the court you can have a nice evening. … For the coaches who were working out guys, it was like, ‘Man, why don’t we have a summer league here?'”
LeGarie pitched former NBA executive vice president of basketball operations Rod Thorn on doing just that in the late 1990s, but the idea was shot down by the league. The league viewed the Las Vegas Strip as nothing but trouble with its gambling-based economy and tempting nightlife.
“It just seemed to suggest more problems than solutions,” LeGarie said. “Initially, it was a hard no.”
LeGarie didn’t give up, however. He and his business partner Albert Hall had been attending various NBA summer leagues for years and, while they believed they were good places to do business, they thought they could be improved. That led to the idea to create their own, and they found themselves continuing to come back to Vegas as the destination for it.
“We thought we could make it more of an event,” Hall said last month. “Vegas was an ideal location because you could get direct flights from everywhere. And, at the time, it was really starting to come around from a recreational, lifestyle, family perspective. There was something for that group; it wasn’t just gambling and nightlife. It was entertainment. It was shows, golf, recreational activities and food and dining.”
The duo added more detail to their plan and LeGarie pitched the idea again to then-deputy commissioner Adam Silver in 2003. This time, he received a much warmer response.
“He seemed to have a better feel for what the reality of Las Vegas was,” LeGarie said. “It was no longer just about The Strip. There were the outlying communities, it had the fastest-growing school districts, there was home construction. He was aware that the whole atmosphere had changed from before.”
LeGarie met with then-commissioner David Stern at All-Star weekend in 2004 and, a month later, the Las Vegas Summer League was approved. LeGarie and Hall fronted the cost for the initial event that year, which included six NBA teams. Now, 17 years later, all 30 teams participate in Las Vegas in the MGM Resorts NBA Summer League. The 10-day league runs this year from Sunday to Aug. 17 with games at the Thomas & Mack Center and Cox Pavilion on the UNLV campus.
The popularity of the league has grown exponentially. At the same time, so has the sports community in Vegas. It’s become home to the NHL’s Golden Knights, WNBA’s Aces and NFL’s Raiders in the last three years alone. In many ways, Summer League paved the way for Vegas to become a destination for sports. And it doesn’t appear to be finished growing yet.
Locals were not believers initially in the Las Vegas Summer League. That was abundantly clear to LeGarie and Hall from the onset.
“We held a press conference and every question was like, ‘You gotta be kidding. What makes you think you can do it? A lot of other people have tried,’” LeGarie said. “There was no encouragement. Zero. When we went and knocked on doors, it was like, ‘Call us another time. Not interested.’”
The reception was discouraging, but they remained optimistic due to how many NBA coaches were behind the league. In the past, summer leagues had been scattered around the country in cities such as Princeton, N.J., San Antonio, Atlanta, Orlando, Salt Lake City and typically lasted only three to five days. (Salt Lake City and now Sacramento still host those smaller two- to three-day events.) They required a lot of travel and the payoff wasn’t always worth it considering the limited time to observe talent. Having a centralized summer league that spanned for an extended period of time just made more sense.
That part was easy to get across, but fans didn’t care about that. They wanted entertainment, which meant the on-court product had to be legit. The 10-day league had notable rookies such as Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo, Al Jefferson and Marcus Banks in its first year, but it wasn’t until it expanded to 12 teams in Year 2 that locals really took notice.
“The local community really got behind it,” Hall said. “We kept ticket prices low. We’ve maintained our one ticket is good for all games philosophy. We could’ve easily priced it as sessions and all these other things, but we really wanted the locals and the fans and the basketball people of Las Vegas to feel like this was their slice of the NBA.
“We’ve done an excellent job of maintaining our footprint in our community. We now have a foundation in Vegas. So, we’ve really given back where we can each and every year and made this not just a, ‘Hey, we’re in town for a week and promoting something,’ situation, but we’ve made Las Vegas our NBA home.”
In its first year, Las Vegas Summer League only drew about 1,700 fans total. Its most recent showcase in 2019 averaged 12,199 fans per day. That increase includes people from all over, but many of the attendees remain Vegas locals.
“The Summer League is homegrown,” LeGarie said. “The people in Vegas, I think when you bring it up there, there’s a source of pride that this is one of their own. It isn’t an event that they bought or had to pay a rights fee to come in; this is something that they initially helped create and sustain. And look, a good portion of the fans are Vegas fans; they’re from Vegas. That part has been terrific for us.”
Additionally, the business brought in from the NBA, international teams, international scouts, agents and spectators in attendance have had a positive impact on the city’s economy. According to a report in collaboration with Las Vegas Events and Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Summer League is estimated to bring in $50 million to Vegas.
“We’re really proud of that as two guys who started this on a credit card, six handshakes and a box of fliers,” Hall said. “You have fans from all 30 NBA teams coming to Vegas because it’s a great destination and they can get away. They’re really growing their fan base using Summer League. That economic impact is real. I think we’re going to continue to see that and that will keep growing as we keep adding to Summer League.”
Summer League wasn’t spared from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The postponement of the NBA season last March and restart through the NBA bubble, which spanned from July through October, meant the 2020 NBA Draft didn’t occur until November. So, for the first time since it began in 2004, Summer League didn’t happen.
“Having to take 2020 off, it was a blow,” Hall said. “It was a big challenge. Because the one thing that Warren and I have always done is we reinvest back into the business. We’re not just trying to carve out profit every year; we’re re-investing in our business from Day 1 and that’s always been the key to our success. Having done that in ’19 thinking that ’20 was going to be another record year and it not happening, it was a tough pill to swallow.
“We’re excited about ’21 now and not going to try to make up lost ground overnight, but building that momentum up is going to be a challenge. People are still coming out of COVID. We’re doing everything we can to have a safe event and to build that model for what a safe event looks like. And we’re in this for the long haul, so once we get through ’21 we’ll take a step back like we always, figure out how we can build things up and make things better and then really attack ’21 with a long runway. … If we get out of ’21, I think ’22 will be special.”
The 2021 NBA Draft took place July 29, just 10 days before Summer League is set to start on Sunday. Preparations had begun before then, but LeGarie and Hall still had less time to work with than normal. The presence of the ongoing pandemic has precipitated an intense focus on details.
“As much as we’d like to believe that we’re past the pandemic, we’re not,” LeGarie said. “We’re really just focusing on making sure that we keep everybody safe. And we’re trying to put together the right protocols in between games to make sure that we’re doing everything we can so that this not only allows the teams to challenge their players and get better but for the fans to certainly have an enjoyable time at our event without potentially getting sick or being in a situation where they feel unsafe. Right now, that’s our new thing is to just make this thing work and be able to pull it out.”
Assuming Summer League gets back on track, it’ll rejoin the trio of the Golden Knights, Aces and Raiders in continuing to establish the presence of professional sports in Vegas. On top of the three professional franchises it already has, it’s also a “viable” option to land the MLB’s A’s. In combination with the increased prevalence of legalized gambling nationally and the willingness of sports leagues to embrace it as a part of their business, Vegas has become a legitimate sports hub.
“In all fairness, there’s a lot of pride and authorship in helping pull this off,” LeGarie. “Clearly, this can’t be done without the invaluable assistance and partnership with the NBA, but each and every year we know that they’re going to be busy with so many other events and our focus is solely on this event.”
The Summer League co-founders spent about three months planning the event when it began. Now, it requires about 11 months of planning.
“You get an emotional investment in something like that,” LeGarie said. “For us, we’ve watched our baby grow up to be a contributing member of society. … It really is a great source of pride that we’ve watched something grow from you knew personally all the people in the gym when you first started off to now you’re sitting there watching a sold-out event not only on the first day but the second and into the third day.”
Summer League helped prove professional sports can work in Vegas and, more specifically, it’s shown that there’s a city affinity for professional basketball. The Aces have checked that box on the women’s side, but there’s still a full-time void on the men’s side.
There hasn’t been confirmation of plans for NBA expansion or relocation, but it’s easy to envision Vegas as a city that would be eager to host a franchise. The planned entertainment complex All Net Resort and Arena will have a capacity of 22,800 and could potentially provide a home floor for a team. There’s no way of knowing now whether that’ll ever come to fruition, but the mere possibility of it is something that the Summer League co-founders are pleased to see.
“It fires us up,” Hall said. “We just produced this event that felt like an additional team, in a way. We softened the beach a little bit. I think we showed people that Vegas is much more than just a weekend gambling town. It’s still a small town in its own ways, but it’s grown up in so many others from a technology and hospitality standpoint. … I think Summer League was able to do that and say, ‘You know what? This is one way where they can sustain it.’
“That’s been enlightening to a lot of people. They’re like, ‘Wow, they’re able to do that with this smaller operation.’ Whereas now you bring in ownership groups and teams and they’re able to build it. … We take a lot of pride in it. If we were a big part of that early on and could help it, that’s great.”
